Looking for a 25GbE switch- from an old timer's perspective

Hi Everyone,

I've found myself in a research loop and would appreciate your help. I come from the Cisco 4509E era and still run a 2960G at home.

I need to build a small (3-rack) datacenter for my startup (we run FPGA computations) and the servers we are using are Dell R7515's and R6525's, I want to connect them using their Mellanox Connectx-5 25GbE links(about 20 Links) and the regular 1GbE stuff(30-Links).

I've done some research into whitebox switches and honestly Its just not worth the effort, from a CEO's perspective I prefer to pay the premium for a managed switch(IOS was a blessing).

I know for sure that I need the Layer2 handled by something as rock solid as the old Catalyst switches only at 25GbE. I've seen the newer 9000 series and personally I don't like that the switch runs an x86 CPU(especially an Intel one) due to MELTDOWN and SPECTRE.

The edge routing will be done by a pfsense machine while the (RFC3021 style p2p network) L3 forwarding will be done by the switch(similar to what a 3750 would've done).

So basically I'm trying to find a way around buying a 9606R.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, Thanks.