Jason Nash’s Blog

Lately on Twitter there has been a lot of chatter about home labs.  I’m not sure if it’s just a coincidence or if I’m just noticing it more but my last post got a lot of good response so I thought I’d move on to the next one.  Part 2 was supposed to be about the compute component but the CPU for my second system was shipped via ground squirrel from California so it won’t be here until tomorrow.  I want to confirm a few more minor things before writing the post on the servers.  Over the last week I’ve gotten a lot of questions on the server pieces so I want to make sure everything is good.  For this post we’ll cover networking.

Let’s do a quick recap on this project.  My goal is to build a small but very effective vSphere home lab.  My plan is to use physical servers and storage so that it will emulate an enterprise environment and be able to check all the boxes on the vSphere Enterprise Plus feature set list.  To do that I had to build out a lab and not go with the usual “run ESXi under VMware Fusion/Workstation” route.  For this I also wanted reasonably good performance (I can’t afford a VMAX at the house…) coupled with low power use and quiet operation.  This lab sits in my home office, not a basement or closet therefore I don’t want it to unnecessarily heat the room up or create obtrusive noise.

Networking is pretty straight forward.  My requirements for the switch I needed were simple.  They were:

• Capability to do 802.1q VLAN tagging
• Port aggregation with LACP (Link Aggregation Control Protocol) and without (manual mode) since vSphere doesn’t support LACP without the Nexus 1000v
• Silent or low noise operation
• Minimum of 24 ports of Gb Ethernet
• Reasonably priced (new or used)
• Must support jumbo frames and flow control, at the same time (some don’t do that)
• Lots of flashy lights

There is nothing here that is unusual.  In my home lab I have no need for a layer 3 switch.  I do require VLAN tagging for some functions and for the Nexus 1000v.  Jumbo frames and flow control are nice and really should be standard on a switch in this range.  The usual suspects all offer switches in this arena.  NetGear has their ProSafe line, D-Link has a number of switches, Linksys/Cisco kind of have switches here but not like they used to, HP has a couple, and there are other lesser known brands.  In fact, there were almost too many options here.

The fact I wanted a low-noise switch basically got rid of almost all of the Cisco and Linksys gear.  You can get some very good used Cisco switches on Ebay but unfortunately, I wouldn’t be able to concentrate in my office with one roaring along in the background.  The downside to going with a “lesser switch” is that if I hit performance anomalies while testing it will be easy (and maybe correct) to blame the switch.  Luckily, I found a good compromise…

To make a long blog post slightly shorter I ended up with an HP ProCurve 1810G-24.  Good warranty, meets all my requirements, and reasonably priced at $300 for a new switch make this a safe choice.  What pushed it over the top over the others was the fact that this switch has no fan therefore it makes absolutely no noise.

If you want an even cheaper option you can look on Ebay or other places for the HP 1800G-24.  It is the predecessor to this switch and with the latest firmware supports all the features in my requirements list.  One word of caution…  I found an 1800G-24 in Varrow’s Charlotte lab but was disappointed to find that Revision A of that model has a fan while Revision B does not.  The one I found was Revision A.

Initial testing on the 1810G-24 shows good results.  I have no intention to hammer the switch.  At best I’ll probably have 6 to 8 ports doing 100% at once and that’s only during a benchmark.  Virtual machine deployment saw speeds of 120MB/s through a single port which is all you can ask for from it.  Managing the switch is very simple through the web interface.  You can learn it in a few minutes.  The only gotcha for me, being a Cisco guy, is how HP uses some terms.  For example, they refer to port-aggregation as Trunking.  Everyone else uses Trunking to mean carrying multiple VLANs.  Once you get over that it’s easy.  I had no problem getting LACP aggregates up to my Synology DS1010+.  I had a small problem getting manual aggregates working correctly with my vSphere server but that was user error…  To see a demo of the interface check the post by Didier here…he beat me to writing that.

As for my compromise…  I have a couple of Cisco 2960S switches in my Varrow lab.  I figure worst case if I suspect the HP is causing a problem when doing some sort of benchmark I’ll throw that in temporarily.  I can deal with the noise for a while and then go back to the nice and quiet HP when I’m done.

So…no bombshells here.  There are a number of good options in this space with similar prices but the HP came highly recommended.  There are a number of people using them in their vSphere labs so it wasn’t much of a risk.  I’ve been using it for a little over a week and so far really like the little switch.  HP has an 8-port version as well that I may pick up for my desk.