Sat Aug 21, 2021 12:30 pm
The setup is powering a small office with
Office network with 2 loadbalanced/failover internet uplinks + vpn connection to the datacenter. Employee Network & Guest network with captive portal (router)
1 local fileserver (10G fibre connection to switch)
Multiple CAPs for the WiFi (PoE powered)
And several wired workstations + printers.
The people are moving large files (art for print).
I'd say this is quite productive, but of course not datacenter grade.
The devices are in a small 19" network rack where space actually does matter, because we inly have that small one.
I'm not saying, the current setup doesn't work, but for example upgrading some of the stations with 10G copper connection on 10/2.5/1 G switch we cannot do due to lack of space in the network rack. (or we'd need to use a different brand and replace essentially everything, which is not a good idea, because all is in a working condition on mikrotik already)
The additional SFP+ switch in my imagined layout would be to interconnect the devices.
I believe there are many other small companies out there who don't wanna have a full rack in their office space. Ofc you can also put stuff into a shelf without a rack at all, but most of the offices I know at least have a network rack anyways. So what's so bad about putting quality devices in there?
btw: I also hope that there is some higher thought behind that small router going into this direction. A home user would not need having 4x the same router in 1U either, would he?
Cheers