I own 10" racks and am a great fan of the compact 10" form factor but have been struggling to find fitting hardware, particularly switches as the choice has been very limited.
Of course you can just put a shelf into your rack and use some desktop switch with a width less than 210mm width (example photo) but in terms of nicely fitting gear all I have discovered so far is the unmanaged 16 GbE port ZyXEL GS1100-16, the rather expensive HPE Aruba 2530-8G series (GbE and some with PoE), and a few GbE switches from Digitus of which only one (DN-95331) features management and PoE.
But if you have more advanced requirements such as SFP or SFP+ slots it really gets difficult in the 10" world as there is absolutely no switch made for 10" rack mount and the choice of feature-rich switches with a width <210mm that you could put on a 10" shelf element is very limited.
That is why I was more than delighted to discover Mikrotik’s product range of affordable feature-rich 200mm switches (610-8G-2S+IN, 112-8G-4S-IN, CRS112-8P-4S-IN, and CRS212-1G-10S-1S+IN) which not only fits perfectly in 10" racks but comes with mounting brackets (Mikrotik calls them “ears”) for 19" racks included in the package:
So I bought the 610-8G-2S+IN, took the longer of the two above ears and converted it for the 10" format by shortening it to 32mm, hammering its profile flat and drilling two new holes. As you can see it somehow worked but - not least because of my lack of proper tools - the result isn’t particularly beautiful:
Now I wonder if Mikrotik are even aware of this 10" rack market and the yawning hardware gap here which they could close instantly by adding a second bracket with 32mm length to their 200mm products. I think this is a niche worth pursuing for Mikrotik.
By the way, there are several threads over at r/homelab indicating the increasing popularity of 10" racks, in many of which there are complaints about the lack of hardware and the fact 10" compatibility is not advertised by hardware vendors, e.g.:
- https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/l9cs67/my_10_inch_rack_home_network/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/k47m0t/5_months_and_all_i_got_was_this_10_rack/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/f6qrum/first_mini_homelab_10/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/7lbvq2/noobie_question_time_the_10_rack/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/ixatlf/cleaned_up_my_networking_so_happy_with_the_10/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/hjdrgo/has_anyone_seen_10_rack_mount_pc_cases_for_sale_a/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/g5bqow/10_rack_cabinet_for_small_resiliencyreliability/
I also note that there’s at least this one German online retailer who has a category for 10" switches and who I know successfully sells 10" racks and equipment: https://www.it-budget.de/10-Netzwerk-Switche
Any feedback and expressions of support are appreciated!
I use a CRS112. Had to cut and repaint one of the brackets.