I recently upgraded my homelab core switch to a Mellanox SX 6012. It’s 12 ports of 40gb/s, and each can break out to 10gb/s. This switch also idles at 30 watts which was top of my list....
I’m pretty much new to all things homelab as I’ve only started looking into it because of my job. I’m relatively new to my position (first job I got after getting my degree), so I wanted to learn more about virtualization and other related tools that could help me....
For performance per dollar nothing beats used enterprise gear due to how little you can pick it up for on eBay. Now if you live somewhere where electricity isn’t stupid cheap or you don’t have a good way to mask the sound of a 1000 angry hornets, then enterprise might not be the way to go. Dell SFF PCs can make good servers. You can also go a long ways with just humble raspberry pis, get a whole bunch of them and you can use that to learn K8s too
If you can get a laptop with a few USB ports that can go a long way to helping with storage expansion. Try to avoid USB drives and SD cards, but attaching proper SSDs and HDDs with a USB caddy is a great option. Just don’t accidentally pass the boot drive USB controller to a vm like I did once.
Homelab Switches
I recently upgraded my homelab core switch to a Mellanox SX 6012. It’s 12 ports of 40gb/s, and each can break out to 10gb/s. This switch also idles at 30 watts which was top of my list....
Need advice for a newbie on building a homelab
I’m pretty much new to all things homelab as I’ve only started looking into it because of my job. I’m relatively new to my position (first job I got after getting my degree), so I wanted to learn more about virtualization and other related tools that could help me....