iJarda

I've passed 200-125 (the old one) and I can strongly agree, HW stuff isn't needed at all. Although I'm working in networking field for 7+ years, I started with non-Cisco gear (now stick mostly to Cisco), I would say certifications are about 50-75% about the experience, 20-40% about theoretical stuff and 5-10% of old stuff, that I think you will probably never see again in real world (ATM...) (I know that % doesn't match to 100 , cuz ranges... depends on your mix of questions). Lab, lab, lab. Practice, trying new things, HW will not save you. You can buy the newest stuff, but that will not solve, that you don't understand the basics of L1-L3 networking. Try to get some troubleshooting labs, they are the most valuable thing, that you can get. Let someone break it for you, and then try to fix it. We learn by making and fixing mistakes. Newer certifications will not make your old knowledge obsolete, they usually just contain wider range of knowledge in another fields (e.g. last refresh in Feb mostly added network automation, programmability etc...) it will not change what VLAN or IP address is. If you really want to spend some money and buy hw, old stuff isn't really worth it. If you can mess with your home network, great, buy it for real world use, not just lab - replace your home network. I would recommend ISR 1921 / 2901 or something like that + (E)HWIC switch module / small dedicated switch (if you care about power consumption, try to avoid large L3 switches, they could be really power hungry - try to start with what most fits you, e.g. L2 2960C or CG etc. or L3 variant of those small compact switches 3560C or CG). And also agree ebay instead of amazon... For setups, where you want to use multiple routers / multiple switches labbing, just use packet tracer (it is prety much all you need for CCNA and most of CCNP stuff) or for more real-world simulation use GNS3 or VIRL/VIRL2 (if you can access it). (remember: routing only!! not L2/L3 switches as their asics could not be simulated in same way as GNS3/VIRL does -> back to PT)

On first page, first post: But I would like to see enterprise stuff from companies here on forums, maybe you can start new thread like "Company infra showcase" and if someone would pin it? it would be awesome.

Are you using some pre-sale models? is that C9k2 really C9200-48PXG? I couldn't see that exact model in datasheet (with modular uplink, just fixed 9200L-48PXG)

I would guess for SOHO it is Turris Omnia or MOX from CZ.NIC. It has automatic firewall rules distribution, automatic updates etc. Yes, it lacks features like PBR, but it is SOHO, not enterprise... check it out on https://www.turris.cz/en/ respectively https://omnia.turris.cz/en/ and https://mox.turris.cz/en/

I think, that if it has enough power, he can use OpenVPN directly on theese servers - I would recommend Linux as a server and Windows server as a client (but, then it has to be configured as a service on WS2016).

These backplanes, especially SAS drives do that, as they don't power up till controller don't call them to spin up, on some systems it spin up drives one by one to not create current peaks.

I have Dell R7910 (equivalent to R730) so I can measure that one for it's 2,5" inch backplane if that would help, but I think whole backplane should just need power sense pin is used also on 8-Pin for PCIe cards where it has 3.3V on that pin connected to pin where other PSUs or 8-pin graphics cards has ground which is internally connected ... so it just "shorts" 3.3V sense to ground and system then knows that this piece of HW is present or not (for example my R7910 knew about my backplane which throwed error when I haven't connected SAS cables and even if I have unplugged backplane control cable, it still throws error that theese cables are missing - it was based on that power cable with sense pin => so sense pin matter for system board, not whole backplane)

yes, they make excellent SOHO, WISP and even their CAPsMAN are great, but not for big deployments which requires reliability. I don't know how better are Edge Routers (they are just even more cleaner Linux based on Debian just with more "friendly" GUI) but as I have long experience with their UniFi products, it is one big piece of sh.. They make excellent WISP products for long time, then they decided to join "enterprise" market by creating UniFi ... we have growing since 2013 with 40 APs to now almost 90 APs and I really wish to get rid with it ... it is just like standalone OpenWRT SOHO APs with orchestration like Ansible/Puppet written in Java and central collectiong of statistics with multiple minutes delay so ... also not recommended for big deployments. (also can explain -> PM). One thing that justifies that crap is that Robert Pera (Ubiquiti founder and CEO) says UniFi is "enterprise like" system. I wish if their marketing department think so.

yea MS DHCP and ISC DHCPD are currently only DHCP servers, which have properly implemented failover as it is described in RFC. Our network was and partialy still is based on linux firewalls which are there since ages... and till few years ago they do ISC-DHCP and bind DNS authoritative/recursive combo also. Then we moved internal routing part, DHCP and DNS forwarding/recursive part to Mikrotik routers - we heavily use their API for DHCP registrations in our custom web app (!! DISCLAIMER you don't want it, Mikrotik is not reliable as DHCP, DNS, NTP etc... PM if anyone wants explanation !!) we will be moving to Cisco L3 switches with stack redundancy and we are preparing and evaluating to use ISC kea-dhcp - I really like it as it has native databse backends support, that means it can be scaled in >2 DHCP servers and use anycast with DHCP relays and clustered database backend (as Facebook uses it in their datacenters).

me (at home) and us (at work) too - (mostly Linux and AD just because end users wants windows...) AFAIK MS DHCP and DNS cannot be easily used with any kind of API something like that

AFAIK, you always need some form of DNS server, as @leadeater said that SRV records aren't that much special, but they describes AD servers which serves your local "search domain" with additional services like basic LDAP, kerberos etc. DNS on Windows server has one advantage - as you add more machines to domain, they are automatically added to DNS with records coresponding to their names, but same thing can be done with DHCP DDNS update function without anything related to AD. If you can't or don't want to let your AD DNS server to send DNS records updates "notifications" to your other (not AD) DNS server, you can grab all of required DNS records from %systemroot%\System32\config\netlogon.dns file and it will work without AD DNS being main DNS for your network (it can be even disabled or blocked by firewall or so...)

Recently I got my SM863, so as you say, it should be OK in ESXi? (R730 directly to SATA, without RAID card) (I haven't tried yet)

If you can go with server hardware, there are few motherboards with integrated "RAID/HBA" controllers like ASRock Rack E3C224D4I-14S or some another from SuperMicro - I have that one from ASRock and if you don't plan to have multiple RAID/HBA controllers or multiple 10G cards, it is great choise.

For weight and size that they gave me (38 pounds and 35x24x9 inches), shipping quote is about 270$ which I think is still a lot.

Yes I have found that post and yes in most of Europe we have 230V outlets so that is no problem, ... and cardboard also isn't problem