I finally gave in an bought some managed switches. I’d been considering a UniFi USW-Pro-XG-48-PoE but its pretty expensive and I’m not a fan of the management setup with Ubiquiti kit.

Basically I need 48 ports that are faster than gigabit and a few 10gbe ports. Management is a nice extra, not really interested in PoE or fibre.

So I got two Sodola 24 port 2.5gbe web-managed switches as they were an amazing deal on Amazon; and also from Sodola directly, their new 16 port 10gbe web-managed switch

The 24 ports have arrived and seem pretty nice, the web management is pretty basic but at the moment my only interest there is LACP for my ProxMox boxes which have 2x 2.5gbe NICs, and IGMP snooping to silence the BTTV box’s multicast blasting.

The 16 port is due to be delivered today (has taken about a week - most of which has been Evri sitting on it) and doesn’t even appear to have a model number yet, let alone firmware or manuals on the website - in fact its unclear if its 14x RJ45 or the more typical 16+2 configuration, as the pictures and product listing are wrong! Coming with that are 3 DAC cables to uplink the 3 switches via their SFP+ ports.

I’ve got three devices that can do 10gbe and about eight that can do 2.5gbe, they were previously all sharing the 8 port NICGIGA and the rest were all hanging off a 48-port Netgear 1gbe. So I’ll have more spare 10gbe ports as the 2.5gbe devices will use the 2.5gbe switches and uplinks will be via SFP+.

I also bought a 12U open-frame rack and a PDU as I’ll need 6 plugs and it looks cleaner/safer than a regular power strip.

I designed and 3D printed some M6 cage nut washers as whilst the rack came with 42 nice black cage nuts and bolts, they didn’t include the washers.

The rack comes with a couple of trays although I’m only going to fit one - which will house both of my ProxMox MiniPC’s, getting one off my desk and freeing up a wallport or two.

So this weekend I’ve got to move my 48-port patchpanel into the new rack. Here’s the before:

img

Here’s the work-in-progress shot:

img

This looks like a good ProxMox LACP bonding tutorial and here are the official docs, looks straightforward enough.

My only concern is how well my two eero Pro 6E’s will work as some people say their mesh technology doesn’t play nice with managed switches (something about them not liking STP?) although I’m not planning on using VLANs yet.