Feel free to skip the long story and jump to the "What's your favorite ONIE-installable Network Operating System?" part.
A little while back I decided to take the plunge and start learning the enterprise side of servers and networking, so I picked up some hardware from ebay that was cheapish enough to learn on, but beefy enough to have a decent home server+lab setup when I was done exploring enough to have a tiny clue what I should end up with. I'm still exploring, and the more I learn, the more I fully understand how clueless I still am. HAH! Anyway, the 3 supermicro X10 servers each have 4x10G RJ45 ports and my X10 router box has 6x, so I haven't really needed to get my 10/40G switch up and running since I've just directly connected to the router and have been using the router as a network switch (appx 5Gb/s from subnet to subnet using the router as 10Gb RJ45 switch running pfsense, soon to be opnsense due to recent blah). But now I have some connectX3 cards and QSFP DAC cables, which I've verified all work, so now its time to get the switch loaded in the rack and start playing with 40GbE and infiniband stuff. Emphasis on the word "stuff" as I still am more or less clueless.
So I have a couple Celestica Redstone D2020's, I got a good deal so I got 2 before the price bounced up, and intended one for rack use and one for dedicated play time or perhaps ridiculous bandwidth to my living room from my adjacent office.
Basic spec: Broadcom BCM56846, 48x 10GbE SFP+ ports, plus 4x 40GbE QSFP, ONIE compatible, no mSATA, no dimm slot, not expandable.
Part of my exploring is trying out new network operating systems, at least NOS's that are ONIE installable and much preferably free for non-commercial use. If there are any NOSs with decent gui admin, I definately want to try those out, might be good to install if I decide to sell the second switch.
So: What's your favorite ONIE-installable Network Operating System?
A little while back I decided to take the plunge and start learning the enterprise side of servers and networking, so I picked up some hardware from ebay that was cheapish enough to learn on, but beefy enough to have a decent home server+lab setup when I was done exploring enough to have a tiny clue what I should end up with. I'm still exploring, and the more I learn, the more I fully understand how clueless I still am. HAH! Anyway, the 3 supermicro X10 servers each have 4x10G RJ45 ports and my X10 router box has 6x, so I haven't really needed to get my 10/40G switch up and running since I've just directly connected to the router and have been using the router as a network switch (appx 5Gb/s from subnet to subnet using the router as 10Gb RJ45 switch running pfsense, soon to be opnsense due to recent blah). But now I have some connectX3 cards and QSFP DAC cables, which I've verified all work, so now its time to get the switch loaded in the rack and start playing with 40GbE and infiniband stuff. Emphasis on the word "stuff" as I still am more or less clueless.
So I have a couple Celestica Redstone D2020's, I got a good deal so I got 2 before the price bounced up, and intended one for rack use and one for dedicated play time or perhaps ridiculous bandwidth to my living room from my adjacent office.
Basic spec: Broadcom BCM56846, 48x 10GbE SFP+ ports, plus 4x 40GbE QSFP, ONIE compatible, no mSATA, no dimm slot, not expandable.
Part of my exploring is trying out new network operating systems, at least NOS's that are ONIE installable and much preferably free for non-commercial use. If there are any NOSs with decent gui admin, I definately want to try those out, might be good to install if I decide to sell the second switch.
So: What's your favorite ONIE-installable Network Operating System?