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I really wanted to get whitebox switches for my lab. There is very limited switch model support out there and almost none of the supported models are suitable f

by davkan 3y ago

I really wanted to get whitebox switches for my lab. There is very limited switch model support out there and almost none of the supported models are suitable for home use. No one needs a $6000 100gbe switch for their home lab. I need an 8 port 10gbe switch or a 48 port 1gbe poe switch and you will not find support for those types of switches from the white box operating systems. Whitebox switching is for datacenter and hyperscaler sdn. It’s not like building a whitebox nas or rolling your own bsd router. There’s really only two managed switch options for the homelab in my opinion. Mikrotik or, if you don’t mind loud noise and higher power consumption, used enterprise gear e.g. cisco. I’ve migrated all my network stuff to vyos routers on used sophos boxes, and mikrotik switches. The switches do nothing besides vlans and mc-lag. Vyos is great and supports everything I need like wan load balancing, vrrp, bgp ecmp, dhcp, dns forwarding.

amluto 3y ago
FWIW, at least some of the small- and medium-size Ruckus switches are fanless or can be set to run in a mostly fanless mode. Doing the latter may limit the available PoE output. Also, eBay is coming up with plenty of reasonably priced Dell -ON switches and some very very cheap EdgeCore gear, but they might be old models and don’t appear on the Pica8 hardware compatibility list. Sigh.
- davkan 3y ago
  I stand corrected, looks like you can get some of those dell switches for a couple hundred bucks, haven't looked at the market in a couple years. To me the biggest thing mikrotik offers that no one else seems to is small reasonably priced 10gbe switches. I don't need a 48 port sfp+ switch, I need two 12 port ones with mc-lag for my ceph/k8s cluster.
  - hammyhavoc 3y ago
    This has been one of the most rewarding comment threads on HN I've read in a long while. Lots of learning even for me in terms of what the current state of things is in terms of cost and choice.

by davkan 3y ago

amluto 3y ago

FWIW, at least some of the small- and medium-size Ruckus switches are fanless or can be set to run in a mostly fanless mode. Doing the latter may limit the available PoE output. Also, eBay is coming up with plenty of reasonably priced Dell -ON switches and some very very cheap EdgeCore gear, but they might be old models and don’t appear on the Pica8 hardware compatibility list. Sigh.

davkan 3y ago
I stand corrected, looks like you can get some of those dell switches for a couple hundred bucks, haven't looked at the market in a couple years. To me the biggest thing mikrotik offers that no one else seems to is small reasonably priced 10gbe switches. I don't need a 48 port sfp+ switch, I need two 12 port ones with mc-lag for my ceph/k8s cluster.
- hammyhavoc 3y ago
  This has been one of the most rewarding comment threads on HN I've read in a long while. Lots of learning even for me in terms of what the current state of things is in terms of cost and choice.