Hey peeps
so ive been debating if its worth upgrade my switch to 2.5 gig connections. The only devices that would use this potential would be my pfsense, proxmox vms running all my docker services, and my nas (5400 rpm drives). I do use nfs quiet a bit but I only have 1 gig up and down from my isp. If i were to upgrade the switch I would prob upgrade my unifi AP to the enterprise edition to support that as well. I’m still digging in to if any devices are actually saturating the 1 gig links but I also like to future proof stuff. so the price tag would be around 1400 bucks. 2 2.5 gig AP’s (u6 ent) and a 2.5 switch (ent 24 poe). Also, if anyone has any insight into 7200 drives for my nas I’ve been hesitant due to posts saying vibration/heat gets worse but the 5400 drives dont support anything over 10ish Tb’s and im trying to get up to 20 Tb a drives. or maybe all SSD? Any insight or suggestions are appreciated.
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If you want to go build a high-capacity all-SSD NAS, you need to decide how many kidneys you can part with.
The folks at /r/datahoarder will be the best to talk to about storage solutions. I prefer 7200 drives for use in my daily driver box, and I don’t really care (but have them) in the NAS.
2.5GBe is overkill — don’t forget you also need the cables that can support the throughput. But, even when you get the cables sorted, drive speed will be a bottleneck anyway.
I would not spend money on 2.5Gbe gear if your WAN is limited to 1gbps.
There just aren’t many reasons in a small network context where having that kind of network speed will give you a tangible benefit. In those circumstances where it would make a benefit, you would already know and would not be asking this question.
When it comes to gaming, the speed of data transfer on your internal network will mean diddly-squat. Firstly, I am not aware of any games that will saturate a 2.5g link. That’s because most online games are designed to be playable on ADSL+. There just isn’t that much data transfer.
And if you are doing LAN party only type stuff, then you will likely want a switch with more ports than with more bandwidth per port.
2.5g works on cat5e for reasonable distance. I’d be surprised if anybody today would have something slower.
Unless you’re doing, like, editing on a NAS, the main reason for 2.5 would be concurrency - maybe you’re watching a video, downloading something from steam, copying shit from the NAS, maybe there’s three of you and we’re talking the link to the switch.
Careful with future-proofing. Gear isn’t eternal, not even ssd, nor can you predict how your needs will change perfectly. I do have SSDs in my server-that-acts-as-a-NAS, but that’s the reason: it’s primarily my “pet” home server, I do “local stuff” via ssh on it. If I ever attach external mass storage to it, you can bet it’s gonna be spinning platters, valuing reliability over performance by a wide margin.
I did 10Gig a few months ago and I live it.
If you don’t feel slowed down, I wouldn’t change a thing honestly. At most consider cabling your media devices instead of streaming over Wi-Fi.