I have a need to provide access switches at the edge of our network that are 8 to 24 port but aren't "data center loud". We've been using cheap "web managed" HP Procurve switches, but the entire procurve line seems to now be some sort of sub brand of Aruba?? or something on HPs site, and more problematically, they don't support enough VLANs or MSTP, so if they ever get into the wrong place, they break spanning tree.
For reference all our core is Blade / IBM / Lenovo System Networking G8000, G8052 etc switches, which are perfect in that they're reliable, cheap on ebay, and support lots of VLANs and MSTP. However, they're way too loud to be in offices, and are all 40+ ports.
I'm not loving HP Procurve (especially as I have no idea what the new name is) as much recently, mostly due to lack of "complicated" VLAN and MSTP features, so I'm trying to work out what I might replace it with. Any suggestions?
I've posted this to /r/sysadmin and gotten ubiquiti and microtik, neither of which show MSTP support in their documentation, and at least for microtik looks somewhat complicated for trunking VLANS also.
Given that I may be looking for a Unicorn here - would it be "safe" to just not have the edge switches handle MSTP and have our policy to not daisy chain them? This is what we've been doing with the HPs but it seemed like it would be best to standardize on MSTP on all switches as an end goal - but if it's not possible I need to know if the current model is a reasonable backup plan.
We cannot get away from 8-24 port switches at the edge to connect multiple computers or instruments over one cable back to the core. I.e. we can't run new cables to core switches.
Slightly OT - is there some reasonable direct replacement from anyone, including HP to the 1800-8G Procurves?
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