Celejar wrote: > On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 15:41:13 -0400 > Dan Ritter <d...@randomstring.org> wrote: > > ... > > > To give an idea of what you might buy: > > > > a firewall/router > > a switch > > a load-balancer > > 2 web servers > > a database server > > a mail server > > a general utility box with lots of storage to handle backups > > > > All of those duties except the switch can reasonable be run on > > Debian servers. > > I'm curious, although I don't know much about, and have little > experience with, enterprise hardware. Am I correct in my understanding > that it is actually possible to run (more-or-less) Debian on a switch > by using OpenSwitch (OPX) on an Open Networking switch. I have no idea > if this would be cost-effective in the OP's situation - basic switches > are certainly a whole lot cheaper than the ones I looked at on the > OPX HCL.
Yes, and yes, those are fairly high-end switches compared to what people tend to use in homes and offices. In many situations, people don't even need a manageable switch. Once you start to exceed, say, 40 connections, a managed switch becomes first useful and then necessity. When you need multi-chassis failover and intra-switch links of more complexity than "each desktop gets an 8 port gig-e switch with one used as an uplink to the office switch", you need high-end switch features. -dsr-