Hello everyone! I think it is my first time posting here.
I am doing some research for a friend who owns a small video editing company.
He currently has an appalling set-up and I stepped in to help and move his data on a FreeNAS box. We are looking to spend about 2-3k EUR for the whole setup with mainly used enterprise equipment and I understand that this may not be something this subreddit is used to. Please don't cringe too much!
I am looking at Dell 12 Gen servers, mainly R620 or R720. He is going to need an external hdd shelf anyway due to the large amount of data and drives. We will use Samba.
The caveat is that he is using old Mac Pros and Hackintosh machines for editing because his editors are used to working with Final Cut. They will be editing on the NAS. I want to move his workstations to 10Gb. Unfortunately, the Mac OS does not support the usual (r/homelab) cheap Mellanox cards, so I am looking at Intel X520s, X540s or Aquantia AQtion based cards, all of which cost around 100 EUR either be it SFP+ or RJ45.
Moreover, the 12 Gen Dell servers have Mezzanine card options with Intel X520's or X540's that are similarly priced and the X540's (10Gbase-T) are more available in Europe. I am looking to conserve PCI-e slots for future use.
SFP+ cabling would be considerably more expensive. There are currently 5 workstations that need 15m+ of cable each. The cost of 10 MM SFP+ transceivers alone is about double what 5 x Cat6A patch cables of the required length cost.
Switch options are the Unifi 16-XG (SFP+) or Netgear XS708E (10Gbase-T). The Netgear is ~50 EUR cheaper but considered unreliable. The Unifi is said to have problems with the RJ45 ports, at least in 10Gb mode. The usual (r/homelab) used suspects like the Quanta LB6M are nowhere to be found in Europe, are expensive or draw too much power. At 0.2 EUR/KWh a more expensive 50W switch is going to pay for itself against a 150W+ cheaper one pretty quickly.
TL;DR
Need switch with at least 6 x 10Gb ports, new or used. SFP+ only if considerably cheaper than 500 EUR with <150W power consumption.
Switches that need lots of hackery (like complicated firmware flashing, difficult cli configuration etc) are not welcome.
Network will be flat, no need for advanced routing capabilities.
Unreliable equipment not welcome.
Has to be available in Europe. Cannot buy from US or Asia due to crazy import taxes.
LACP would be nice for the NAS to have a 20Gb uplink to the workstations. Not sure if it will be helpful or easy to implement.
Subnote: I know all of the above might not be recommended for a production grade setup. Unfortunately, the financial situation is forcing us to go down this route.
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