Best 48+ Port Fully Managed Network Switch (ISSUES)

[PenguinMaster]

I have a Quanta LB4M Network Switch at the moment, and I hate it, the customer support is crap and there is no information at all on the internet for firmware/software updates.  I am looking on eBay for a replacement switch, not from Quanta that is Fully Managed, 48+ Port GbE Network Switch, preferably also with 2+ 10GB Ports, I am implementing an SSD based NAS at some point and I would like 10Gig for it.  My budget is around $50. (for a used switch)  I can up my budget a little if someone recommends an awesome switch.  I would also prefer something that isn't too loud as my server rack is in my office.  Thanks for any assistance.

[brwainer]

“Best fully managed” and “$50” don’t go together. A good switch I’d be happy with is an HP 2530-48G, used they run about $120, but they don’t have any 10Gb ports.

the Quanta LB4M are cheap because the interface is basic and crappy. But I believe you can flash them with alternate firmwares - I know you can for the LB6M.

[PenguinMaster]

5 minutes ago, brwainer said:

“Best fully managed” and “$50” don’t go together. A good switch I’d be happy with is an HP 2530-48G, used they run about $120, but they don’t have any 10Gb ports.

the Quanta LB4M are cheap because the interface is basic and crappy. But I believe you can flash them with alternate firmwares - I know you can for the LB6M.

I've been looking at Dell PowerConnect 2848's and Netgear GS748T and one TRENDnet TEG-448WS.  Do you know anything about theses switches?

[Electronics Wizardy]

Do you want l3? poe?

 

aruba s2500 about 100 usd on ebay, works pretty well.

9 minutes ago, Chickenfans said:

I've been looking at Dell PowerConnect 2848's and Netgear GS748T and one TRENDnet TEG-448WS.  Do you know anything about theses switches?

what do you want to do with the managed part of the switch. I personaly don't like the netwgear interface

[PenguinMaster]

18 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Do you want l3? poe?

 

aruba s2500 about 100 usd on ebay, works pretty well.

what do you want to do with the managed part of the switch. I personaly don't like the netwgear interface

I am looking for a Web GUI. I really only want a Managed Switch for VLAN's. The switch really could be unmanaged if it has 10Gig connectivity for 2x ports since 10Gig will be fast enough and I won't need VLAN's.  I don't like Command Line interfaces very much. I'd prefer a Web Interface.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Chickenfans said:

I am looking for a Web GUI. I really only want a Managed Switch for VLAN's. The switch really could be unmanaged if it has 10Gig connectivity for 2x ports since 10Gig will be fast enough and I won't need VLAN's.

what 10g do you want? sfp? 10g base-t?

 

If you don't want 10g this easy, tons of switches cheap, esp since you don't need advanced features.

 

For 10g, id probably go dell 5548. Pretty good web interface, reasonble power usage.

 

Here is one for $75 https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-PowerConnect-5548-48-Port-Gigabit-Switch/142976123438?epid=1801574514&hash=item214a0a822e:g:t5YAAOSwWCFbxJtb

 

If you go higher end with the ciscos and arubas and others your doing all the settings in the cli and you don't want that.

[PenguinMaster]

27 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

what 10g do you want? sfp? 10g base-t?

 

If you don't want 10g this easy, tons of switches cheap, esp since you don't need advanced features.

 

For 10g, id probably go dell 5548. Pretty good web interface, reasonble power usage.

 

Here is one for $75 https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-PowerConnect-5548-48-Port-Gigabit-Switch/142976123438?epid=1801574514&hash=item214a0a822e:g:t5YAAOSwWCFbxJtb

 

If you go higher end with the ciscos and arubas and others your doing all the settings in the cli and you don't want that.

Either 10G is fine with me.  Thanks for the Switch Suggestion!  I've never seen a switch with HDMI ports lol.

[Electronics Wizardy]

55 minutes ago, Chickenfans said:

Either 10G is fine with me.  Thanks for the Switch Suggestion!  I've never seen a switch with HDMI ports lol.

hdmi is used for stacking, so you can buy a few more switches of the same model and make one bigger switch(in simple terms) it would be managed like one switch.

[PenguinMaster]

36 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

hdmi is used for stacking, so you can buy a few more switches of the same model and make one bigger switch(in simple terms) it would be managed like one switch.

Thanks for the info! I didn't know that.  Do you know when linking multiple switches together what speeds you can see when multiple devices are trying to talk to each other?

[Electronics Wizardy]

22 minutes ago, Chickenfans said:

Thanks for the info! I didn't know that.  Do you know when linking multiple switches together what speeds you can see when multiple devices are trying to talk to each other?

I think those hdmi ports are 10g each, so if you have 2 stacked with 2 cables you would have 20gbit between them.

[Alex Atkin UK]

3 hours ago, Chickenfans said:

I am looking for a Web GUI. I really only want a Managed Switch for VLAN's. The switch really could be unmanaged if it has 10Gig connectivity for 2x ports since 10Gig will be fast enough and I won't need VLAN's.  I don't like Command Line interfaces very much. I'd prefer a Web Interface.

I wouldn't go with an unmanaged.  I'm using a Smart Managed switch and HAD to enable flow control on the Gigabit ports, otherwise accessing my NAS on the 10Gig port would be half what it was on Gigabit before, due to flooding the switch with traffic.  Not sure why TCP congestion control didn't avoid that, but it didn't.

[PenguinMaster]

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

I think those hdmi ports are 10g each, so if you have 2 stacked with 2 cables you would have 20gbit between them.

Out of these switches, what would you recommend?  I was reading a little about the Dell 5548 and people said that it is very loud in their work environment.  Are there any other switches that have the 10Gig capability that you would recommend?

 

-NETGEAR GS748T, either v3 or v4

-D-Link DGS-1210-48

-Dell PowerConnect 2848

-Dell PowerConnect 5548

-TRENDnet TEG-448WS

[PenguinMaster]

13 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

I wouldn't go with an unmanaged.  I'm using a Smart Managed switch and HAD to enable flow control on the Gigabit ports, otherwise accessing my NAS on the 10Gig port would be half what it was on Gigabit before, due to flooding the switch with traffic.  Not sure why TCP congestion control didn't avoid that, but it didn't.

I'll definitely look into buying a managed switch then. Thanks for the info.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 hour ago, Chickenfans said:

-Dell PowerConnect 2848 

no 10g, so id personally stay away

 

1 hour ago, Chickenfans said:

-NETGEAR GS748T, either v3 or v4

no 10g, no serial port, not personally a fan of the web interface

 

1 hour ago, Chickenfans said:

D-Link DGS-1210-48 

no 10g, no serial, looks fine otherwise

 

1 hour ago, Chickenfans said:

TRENDnet TEG-448WS 

no 10g, no serial, looks fine otherwise

1 hour ago, Chickenfans said:

Dell PowerConnect 5548

id personally get this for the 10g. One annoyance is you may have to set web interface ip with serial first.

 

 

For your listed use these should all work fine with a reasonble web interface, and vlans should work fine. Id personally get the 5548 for the 10g, but if you don't care about that then id get the cheapest one.

[PenguinMaster]

On 6/26/2019 at 10:30 PM, Electronics Wizardy said:

no 10g, so id personally stay away

 

no 10g, no serial port, not personally a fan of the web interface

 

no 10g, no serial, looks fine otherwise

 

no 10g, no serial, looks fine otherwise

id personally get this for the 10g. One annoyance is you may have to set web interface ip with serial first.

 

 

For your listed use these should all work fine with a reasonble web interface, and vlans should work fine. Id personally get the 5548 for the 10g, but if you don't care about that then id get the cheapest one.

Does the Dell 5548 switch definitely have a Web Interface?  I was reading some articles about enabling the Web Interface, but some say there isn’t or they were unsuccessful.  I just want to make sure before I purchase one.  Do you have any good articles about enabling the Web Interface, if there is one?

[Electronics Wizardy]

10 minutes ago, Chickenfans said:

Does the Dell 5548 switch definitely have a Web Interface?  I was reading some articles about enabling the Web Interface, but some say there isn’t or they were unsuccessful.  I just want to make sure before I purchase one.  Do you have any good articles about enabling the Web Interface, if there is one?

It has a web interface

 

did you look at the dell setup guide here https://downloads.dell.com/manuals/all-products/esuprt_ser_stor_net/esuprt_networking/esuprt_net_fxd_prt_swtchs/powerconnect-5548_setup guide_en-us.pdf

 

there is a first time run through mode to do first setup and do things like setup ip and password and enable the web interface.

[PenguinMaster]

On 7/1/2019 at 8:19 PM, Electronics Wizardy said:

It has a web interface

 

did you look at the dell setup guide here https://downloads.dell.com/manuals/all-products/esuprt_ser_stor_net/esuprt_networking/esuprt_net_fxd_prt_swtchs/powerconnect-5548_setup guide_en-us.pdf

 

there is a first time run through mode to do first setup and do things like setup ip and password and enable the web interface.

I decided on the TRENDnet TEG-448WS.  This was because ultimately I decided I didn't need the 10Gig Ports because I'm going to be using regular NAS HDD's in my storage server.  They are rated for 200mb/s, and I'm getting a 12 bay storage machine so max data transfer would be 2400mb/s, so I can just set up 3 Gigabit V-LANS.  Thanks for your help through this process though!

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 hours ago, Chickenfans said:

I decided on the TRENDnet TEG-448WS.  This was because ultimately I decided I didn't need the 10Gig Ports because I'm going to be using regular NAS HDD's in my storage server.  They are rated for 200mb/s, and I'm getting a 12 bay storage machine so max data transfer would be 2400mb/s, so I can just set up 3 Gigabit V-LANS.  Thanks for your help through this process though!

I think your getting your bit vs byte wrong. 

 

Most nas hdds can get around 150mB/s or about 1200mb/s. One nas hdd can easily fill gigabit, so 12 drives will almost fill 10gbe in raid.

[PenguinMaster]

2 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

I think your getting your bit vs byte wrong. 

 

Most nas hdds can get around 150mB/s or about 1200mb/s. One nas hdd can easily fill gigabit, so 12 drives will almost fill 10gbe in raid.

I might be, these are the drives I decided on. https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-IronWolf-Internal-Hard-Drive/dp/B07H23VGPH/ref=dp_ob_title_ce?th=1  They say speeds of "195MB/s".  I did some research and I figured out what you meant.  This is going to be a problem for any of those switches then because there won't be enough 10Gig ports for all the storage machines I want to add.  It looks like if I fill all 12 bays on one server I would need 2 10Gig connections.  So I would need something like a 48 port switch with 8 10Gig Ports! (2 10Gig for each storage machine).  Does such a switch even exist?!

 

My math is (195MB/s - drives x 12 - total drives x 8 - convert to megabit) = 18720 - I may have done this wrong?

[brwainer]

2 hours ago, Chickenfans said:

I might be, these are the drives I decided on. https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-IronWolf-Internal-Hard-Drive/dp/B07H23VGPH/ref=dp_ob_title_ce?th=1  They say speeds of "195MB/s".  I did some research and I figured out what you meant.  This is going to be a problem for any of those switches then because there won't be enough 10Gig ports for all the storage machines I want to add.  It looks like if I fill all 12 bays on one server I would need 2 10Gig connections.  So I would need something like a 48 port switch with 8 10Gig Ports! (2 10Gig for each storage machine).  Does such a switch even exist?!

 

My math is (195MB/s - drives x 12 - total drives x 8 - convert to megabit) = 18720 - I may have done this wrong?

Even with a large number of disks, it is hard for an all-HDD server to use more than 10Gb/s, due to the low IOPS of HDDs. One 10Gb connection per storage server will be plenty.

 

EDIT: you are basing your math on pure sequential transfers, which is very unlikely in any server situation.

[PenguinMaster]

1 hour ago, brwainer said:

Even with a large number of disks, it is hard for an all-HDD server to use more than 10Gb/s, due to the low IOPS of HDDs. One 10Gb connection per storage server will be plenty.

 

EDIT: you are basing your math on pure sequential transfers, which is very unlikely in any server situation.

So i’d be looking for a 48 port 1Gig switch with 4 10Gig ports?  Do you know of any switches that have these specs?  I already have both the Quanta and the TRENDnet.  Should I look into running 10 1Gig connections between the two or just sell both and buy a new switch? (I know shipping is going to be a fortune for these)

[Electronics Wizardy]

10 hours ago, Chickenfans said:

 Does such a switch even exist?!

Yes, look at the brocade icx 6610 can do this, but its a bit over the price you want.

 

But even if all the clients aren't on 10g, there will be one system that is faster, and you can hit it with all the systems at once.

 

7 hours ago, Chickenfans said:

So i’d be looking for a 48 port 1Gig switch with 4 10Gig ports?  Do you know of any switches that have these specs?  I already have both the Quanta and the TRENDnet.  Should I look into running 10 1Gig connections between the two or just sell both and buy a new switch? (I know shipping is going to be a fortune for these)

aruba s2500? I got one and it works well.

 

 

 

 

[brwainer]

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Yes, look at the brocade icx 6610 can do this, but its a bit over the price you want.

Be aware if going down this route, the ICX switches use “Port On Demand” which means the ports are 1Gb unless you buy a software license to upgrade them to 10Gb. The license is “ICX6610-10G-LIC-POD” and each one upgrades 4 ports. When buying used, the license might or might not be included if it was previously applied.

[leadeater]

6 hours ago, brwainer said:

Be aware if going down this route, the ICX switches use “Port On Demand” which means the ports are 1Gb unless you buy a software license to upgrade them to 10Gb. The license is “ICX6610-10G-LIC-POD” and each one upgrades 4 ports. When buying used, the license might or might not be included if it was previously applied.

Licensed 10Gb ports.... that sucks big time.