Some of the DELL Switches can run open source OS - you have the option of either their OS10 or Open switch software. e.g., the S4148s I have at work. Nice switches, those. But I’m sure there are low level/older models in the DELL switch portfolio that can also run open source on them.
This is a crypto operation. If I’m successful I’ll definitely have 100 computers running on this 24/7 validating transactions and other such stuff. Five minutes of downtime should be fine for now. I’ll just add the second router in about a month. I’ll be updating the router and switch whenever a patch comes out, as I’m going to be targeted by hackers and government bodies that want this technology to fail.
Running nodes for a decentralized search engine, and various other projects. Basically, trying to hit every project I think is worthwhile from a technological standpoint.
HP/DELL with service contracts if this is a businesses endeavour are probably the way to go.
I personally really like the Mikrotik gear for fun/playing in my lab though I would like to see a 2.5g POE switch form well… anybody.
The reason to buy Cisco is that when you have a problem, you get a replacement unit ASAP.
When you buy TP-Link, you better hope the local place has stock for your 3 week adventure.
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Yeah this.
I have a love/hate relationship with Cisco. I’ve been a Cisco IOS devotee since the 90s, but the recent experience with DELL S4148 has been positive.
Dell enterprise also have pretty good support.
But yeah any enterprise gear, you’re paying a lot more essentially to have some spares sitting in stock, available for you within your SLA in the case of equipment failure. That isn’t free.
I just need two switches and should purchase a third every few months?
The racket Juniper has is if you’re a successful business the cost of their units is just a beneficial tax write off for successful tech businesses. Though, if you fail to earn a profit in three years the IRS considers you hobbyist, and probably sends you to prison or gives you a huge fine.
@Zerophase what is your budget? Based on the OP, I figured you were looking at $500 range switches which excludes any new enterprise/datacenter offerings. If you do have a bigger budget, and are still looking for something open source, newer Edge-core switches support sonic or you can always go with Arista or other ONIE options.
If you are actually going to be targeted by serious state actors, you’ll need a sophisticated IDS and someone with a lot of security experience to admin it.
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If I get big I’ll need to bring someone specialized in security on. I should be fine till I have millions of dollars sitting on a server somewhere. There’s probably easier targets than me with way more money, like Poly Network. Once I have someone specialized in networking onboard I’ll probably replace some of this networking equipment.
I don’t want to go past $3k to $4k for the router and switch combo. Definitely, going with the top end OPNSense router. DEC850 looks good for at least a few years. I just need one switch for now. After the DEC850 I have up to about $2.5k to spend. I’d like to save on that, and not overbuy on the switch. If I can pull it down to about $500 to $1.5k on the switch that would be preferable. I’m leaning toward Juniper for now as it’s BSD based. Edge core looks awesome still. Which switch would you recommend from them for my needs?
The network should be getting pinged a lot with transaction validations. So, I’m going a bit overboard on networking hardware. The polkadot community doesn’t have clear specs listed for everything.
If this company fails I think the IRS fines me a bunch or puts me in prison for trying to write a hobby off on my taxes. Have about three years to build a successful business.
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I know about sonic from my own product research, but I have never used it, nor have I ever used an Edgecore product. When I was looking for open source switches, that looked like the best combination if I had the budget for it, which I didn’t/don’t. That said, any of the ONIE or Arista options have a relatively high barrier to entry as far as networking knowledge goes. There’s no GUI, no sensible defaults. You really need to know how to configure a switch from scratch via cli. I had a CCNA once upon a time and the Arista I have now will still require weeks of research and experimentation before I’ll feel comfortable deploying it.
They’re not going to retroactively make that decision afaik. They might tell you you’re business is a hobby and you have to stop expensing it against your taxable income, but it would only be from that point forward. If you have a ton of big expenses at the beginning and are concerned about appearing profitable, consider depreciating your larger purchases over several years.
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Not my experience here. Took a couple of months to get one of their stupid proprietary DACs…
Agh, farming is easy, it’s all homogeneous mostly.
And unless you’re mining bandwidth, or mining security somehow this is generally easy peasy light batch workload.
So get either:
- Ubiquiti Edge Switch Lite 48
Tons of documentation, possibly resale value, might even be able to get second hand cheap.
- Mikrotik CRS354-48G-4S+2Q+RM
Newer chip/design has 40G uplink now.
They both cost double relative to some other 48port switches (about 350), but have these high speed uplink ports which gives them a lot more value for general purpose stuff, as well as you can connect multiple using these ports as your network grows.
For your router, get a minipc, like a cheap nuc with a 10G port, get an x86 ext4 version of OpenWRT, add some logical VLAN interfaces and do a router-on-a-stick setup…
… or build a cheap integrated graphics modern Intel or Ryzen box and put in a 40G nic from ebay if you go with Mikrotik.
Get a second router when you get a second switch, and do VRRP.
Hypothetically, you could do VyOS (config management distributed baked in), or just bare naked Debian minimal testing, or alpine linux, on your x86 router
You don’t need gnome or “network manager” or other BS, (you’re setting up a router here). In any case you need a Google doc or whatever on how this is set up first time you do it. You don’t need backups, you keep a doc with copy paste-able commands and maybe scripts in a github repo that help you set things up when you need to.
If 5 minutes for upgrades is ok. Get 1 switch, get 1 router and you’re done.
Get a second router when you get a second switch, just in case - they’re more complex, but shouldn’t cost you more than 300-400 to build that box, or a small minipc.
If you need 5 minutes max downtime in case of hardware failure, things get a bit more complicated.
Get 2 switches and get 2 routers and do a 4 post setup
Each router to both switches, each switch to each other, and each router to each other.
This way your network will be up, no matter which single component dies, but you might lose half of your clients if your switch dies.
For simple backup, only use half ports on your switch, or if you need 2 switches, get 3 and use 2/3 the ports, you can rewire whenever while you wait for a replacement to ship.
For 5min downtime to be guaranteed for each client, you can’t be there ready to swap cables 24x7, you need two lines from each client, one to each switch.
To get to 96 clients, you need 4 switches, stagger the primary and backup ports so that you can afford to have any 2 dead switches in your network with your clients still running. As you add more than 96 clients (192 ethernet cables) rewire the 2 new switches in without downtime.
As you get to 20+ client PCs, you’ll want monitoring, this monitoring should be on separate machines, you want at least 2 Prometheus boxes that you’ll be backing up and will know how to rebuild and they can monitor each other.
For your two ISPs, if they’re low bandwidth (<=10Gig lines), stick one into each router.
There you go, theoretically sound 5 min to automated recovery following death of any physical device, relatively cheap, 100+ node setup for less than $2000 total, without subscription fees or vendor lock in. Possibly most expensive thing would be cables and second ISP subscription.
Oh, and you can use wifi as fallback/admin stuff. Traditional DCs would use annoying serial ports … don’t do that.
Wifi is probably not worth it for data (non management) plane, over just having a second ethernet nic, cable is 10c/foot, gigabit nic cards are ~$5 , and gigabit switch ports are <$10. If you’re 50ft away from the switch that’s $20, and you can actually use the thing reliably unlike wifi, and actually shuffle tons of data across, easily.
and keep your home network separate from this nonsense. This is totally not a home network situation, it’s a way different use case - way different needs.
Agh, farming is easy, it’s all homogeneous mostly.
I’m looking into Polkadot staking. The only thing is if your network misbehaves they can fine up to 100% of your stake, and might remove you as a validator. I think you can get in a position where your node is no longer active till the epoch ends, and then you’ll probably get voted out for the next cycle. If you don’t keep your security up, and some hacker starts screwing with your node they take a significant portion of your 20% interest rate and fees collected from nominators.
See this is a common misconception with security.
“i’ll be fine, there are probably easier people to hack than me”
Scripts run against every IP on the internet don’t care.
Malware running against every machine it encounters (or every machine that hits it via the web, etc.) doesn’t care
People have this idea that to get hacked there’s some bad guy hammering away at their shit, but the reality is that its largely automated and launched against every machine on the internet.
Why go for the lowest hanging fruit when you can easily target everything with your botnet and see what shakes out?
I’m not saying you need to be the NSA or whatever, but…
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The security will be good enough. It’ll take a much more complicated attack to get through than just running a script hitting every unsecured network.
Alright, so I have all of this stuff coming. Just need the right server rack. The completely silent racks would be ideal, but those are about $5k each. Supposedly, that Microtek can get fairly loud. I have to live with it. Would a this rack be enough for keeping the noise down, while supporting further expansion later?
I’ll probably replace the rack fans with Noctuas, and maybe the switch fans too. But, putting PWM fans on there would violate the warranty, and I don’t know if the PWM implementation is done properly.
What all are you putting in the rack? Just network? Big storage boxes may be too long for that one and require more airflow than it provides (and will be loud).
I’ll be dropping HDDs in there too, and replacing the fans on that box. The Mikrotik CRS354-48G-4S+2Q+RM is a 1U unit. I’m just trying to keep the switch quiet, and have room to store hotswappable HDDs in RaidZ3 for my backup server. Probably aiming for up to 24 to 48 disks on my server.
Fan modding 4U storage chassis is usually pretty ok just because they’re designed for worst case (15k rpm sas full load 24/7) and big noctua fans will push a lot of air quietly. So you can sub in noctuas and use average joe enterprise drives under average load and never break 45ºC on a drive. Just avoid 2U and 1U chassis. There are no quiet fans that will push the necessary amount of air unless you’re looking at low power systems.
Definitely measure the length of the storage chassis to ensure it will fit in whatever rack you get. Note that often, the rails are longer than the server. I made that mistake recently and had to dremel off the end of the rails which is really really not ideal (ball bearings everywhere).
I didn’t realize that the mikrotik switches were loud. Kind of assumed they were in the same ballpark as all the Ubiquiti switches.
I guess they can get loud under load. If I replace the fans in the Mikrotik it should be silent. No idea if after market fans will work properly, though. I’m also used to the silence of water cooling. Probably won’t put that on a server for 24/7 operation.
32U is probably too large. At the most I’ll need 4U for the drives, 2U for two switches, and some space between for cooling purposes. Might put one of those cooling units in. I could probably get less than a 24U and be fine.
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