Building a FreeBSD switch with commodity hardware

[Julien Cigar]

On Thu, Jan 24, 2019 at 08:39:51PM +0000, Simon Connah wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> First of all I am not a networking wizard so would appreciate a little 
> help to see if my plan is achievable.
> 
> I need a 1U switch to put in a datacentre and due to my familiarity with 
> FreeBSD I thought building a switch based on FreeBSD would be the 
> perfect solution but I'm not sure what the hardware requirements would 
> be. I have 10 to 20 1gbps Ethernet devices to connect to the switch and 
> a single 1gbps uplink to the rest of the internet.
> 
> I'd like to be able to configure VLANs, allocate IPv4 and IPv6 addresses 
> to individual machines and use FreeBSD as a firewall for the whole 
> process. I also want to be able to expand my system at a later date if I 
> need to be able to handle more devices on the local network so I'd need 
> to be able to hook the two networks together somehow.
> 
> What I'm not sure about is what hardware specs I'll need for this. What 
> kind of CPU and RAM will I require and which Ethernet cards should I 
> get? This is not a project that requires 100% up time but realiability 
> is important during certain hours of the day.
> 
> I'd appreciate some advice. If you need any more information then let me 
> know and I'll try and provide it.

You can also buy two "simple" L2 switches (we use two
https://www.fs.com/fr/products/72944.html stacked) and buy two "small"
devices where you install FreeBSD with PF, CARP, Unbound, etc (we use two
https://www.netgate.com/products/rcc-ve-4860-1u.html) to do the
routing/firewalling/dns cache/DHCP server/...). That's what we do here
and it works like a charm for years.

You'll have better performance with an L3 switch of course..

> 
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-- 
Julien Cigar
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