Hello All,

 

I'm looking for some new switches and I wanted to see what you guys use, like and have had good results with. Used hardware suggestions are welcome. I've been struggling with a Dell Powerconnect 2716 & 2824 and configuring it for 802.3ad / 802.1ax which is driving this decision.

 

In terms of the dell switches it turns out that the switches only support static linking / LAG rather than LACP which is needed for 802.3ad bonding on UnRAID. Though currently I do have the bonding mode: balance-rr (0) enabled with 4x gigabit ethernet ports bonded together on the unRAID server my throughput is only ~1Gbps from the array. Additionally, max throughput is ~1Gbps between a VM running Windows Server 2016 on unRAID and my workstation with dual teamed intel ethernet cards statically linked. Is there something I'm doing wrong here?

 

For a little background on the subject I have a X9DRi-LN4+/X9DR3-LN4+ with two E5-2630L v2 and 4x gigabit ethernet running unRAID in a 846 supermicro chassis. I also have two workstations running dual gigabit ethernet and a number of Nvidia Shield devices. There are three switches in the house which will need to be replaced. One will need a 24-port another is a 16-port and another is an 8-port. I can provide a 3x gigabit uplink to the 24-port from the 16-port and a 2x gigabit uplink to the 8-port from the 24-port (I could add a 3rd if I decided to run another one in the attic). The house is wired with cat5e but where I can I've been using cat6a so that I can future proof myself.

 

I know that this is a lot of information but I wanted to provide a bit of context. I'm basically seeking to get the highest throughput and bandwidth I possibly can and optimize what I have. 10gbe would be great but the cost of it seems prohibitive given the number of switches and ports I have.

 

I don't know though, what are your guys' thoughts?

 

Thanks! 

 

 

 

Edited August 15, 20187 yr by dkm3

I played around with unRaid and LAG about 2 years ago. I got it to work but never at double throughput, maybe 140% gigabit speed. I don't remember, but it wasn't what I thought it would be. 

 

I recently wired cat 6 in my house. I'll incrementally upgrade as I go because as you mentioned, they are cost prohibitive at the moment. 

 

If sound wasn't an issue, you could always run a 10bge line to a location and have it dump to an enterprise switch(noise) with 1-2 10gbe ports and a bunch of 1 Gbit ports. might be the more cost effective way in the short term.