Homelab Foundations: Brocade ICX Switches – Cheap and Powerful 10GbE/40GbE | Hacker News Reader

Homelab Foundations: Brocade ICX Switches – Cheap and Powerful 10GbE/40GbE

forums.servethehome.com

22 pointsmetadat12 comments

I read a bunch of the author’s guides and purchased an ICX6610 as my main switch for home and an ICX7150-C12P for my attic, with a 10gbe fiber link between the two. It’s total overkill but both are really nice pieces of equipment. I use the PoE features for my UniFi wifi setup, and plan to hook up a home server I run to one of the 40gbit ports.

The ICX6610 is pretty loud so it needs to be away from living areas, but the 7150 is fanless and silent.

Used commercial equipment is an interesting option that didn't occur to me when looking for a sfp+/sfp28 solution at home. Even with a fanless option like the 7150 (or a similar mikrotik, some of which are cheap enough new) I still ultimately needed an AP with a 5gb connection which basically is the consumer sfp+/wifi router option.

I upgraded my home network from a Cisco 3750G to a Brocade ICX 6610 a couple years ago...

  - 40 GbE to the "new" (in process of being set up and deployed) NAS

  - 10 GbE to the "old" (being phased out) NAS (was: 40 GbE)

  - 40 GbE to my workstation

  - 10 GbE to the "other machine" on my desk

  - n x 10 GbE to the cluster of ESXi servers

  - 10 GbE to other misc. servers in the rack

  - Multiple 10 GbE and 1 GbE links to the PTP GrandMasters and NTP servers

  - Plus all the various PoE devices (APs, VoIP phones, etc.) and miscellaneous other hosts (NTP appliances, DRACs, PDUs, NetBotz, etc.) at 1 GbE and/or 100 Mbps

Unfortunately, I'm just about out of 10 GbE ports so I may need to get another ...

Highly recommend the ICX 6610 in particular. The only other Brocade (Ethernet) switches I've personally managed are the "access layer" FCX switches (in an old position 10+ years ago).

Did you have to deal with any 10GbE port licensing for the 6610?

What did you do for devices which don't support 10G optical?

The author of the guide linked to by OP has a series of docs for resetting the 6610 to factory settings and licensing all the ports. My understanding is that especially for the old switches like the 6610, it’s not possible to buy licenses anymore so you can just unlock them.

For copper 10gbe connections, you have two main choices: you can use DAC cables which end up being cheap but are hard or impossible to fish through walls or terminate at a patch panel, or you can use a 10G-BASET transceiver which gives you standard RJ45 jack but costs about $50 for each end of the connection plus the cost of a cat6 or better cable.

Edit: obviously if you already have a device with a copper 10gbit port, then you only need one transceiver (for the switch port), and using a DAC is a no-go since DACs require SFP ports at both ends of the connection.

Kind of cool for dirty cheap gear? But tbh the power draw on some of that gear seems to run 2x to 4x that of similar spec'ed current gen gear from mikrotik. Which after a year or three's service makes the low initial cost seem like a trap. Going from 11-20w up to 50w per device is substantial.

For absurdities sake, can run 100 switches in my home lab for same power cost as like 40 of these old gen and that's off a 10a single socket. Pretty darty. Makes plotting ghetto redundant power setups way easier.

A lot of the mikrotiks around ~20w are actually not providing as many >1gb ports as the used equipment or mikrotiks that also use around 40-50w, so if you actually need many fast ports the older equipment might be a better deal.

I've bought mikrotik devices before, but they issue so few firmware updates I don't think I want to continue down this path. They have a history of ignoring egregious security issues.

Brocade on the other hand is another story, they issue frequent updates and are rock solid in the reliability department.

Been using an ICX7150-C12P for a while as my main switch.

One thing that’s been found since this was written is that they don’t tolerate running hot well, and the failure point is the power supply.

Do you mean they aren't suitable for a hot environment like an unventilated attic?

Yes; I would at least add a fan on top to extend the life of those power supply components, preferably with a filter.

I’ve used various Brocade products in previous lives and the ICX line is a solid switch. Like another poster, I’d also not considered them for a home lab but definitely will now.

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