I’ve been researching options for replacing my switches and looking for some help deciding on some ideal candidates for the Homelab. If you’re doing network automation at work or in your homelab and have some insight, please, PLEASE post a comment so I can learn more.

I need 2 switches:

  1. Agg switch
    1. 16-24 SFP+ 10 gigabit ports
    2. Port channel to Access Switch, VLANS
  2. Access switch
    1. 8-24 POE+ ports
    2. Port channel to Agg Switch, VLANS

Hard requirements are:

  1. Automation Maturity for Switch OS
    1. The point of my homelab is to learn tools like Ansible, Nornir, NAPALM, Netmiko, PyATS, Oxidized, etc
    2. I could be wrong, but some brands that appear kinda weak are Ubiquiti and Mikrotik
  2. Price is less than $600 used on eBay
    1. Subscriptions like Meraki could push me over $600 when I run this for 3 years or more
  3. Power usage should be somewhat humble
    1. Less than 75ish watts idle sounds wonderful but if I go to higher than 150ish, my tiny office turns into an oven

Soft requirements:

  1. Age - shouldn’t be so old the last critical security update was over a year ago. I’d prefer not to bring in a ton of zero day risk if I don’t have to

I think Cisco looks the strongest in terms of Automation Maturity? Juniper, Arista and Dell have some interesting options too but I have no experience with those brands. If you do any network automation, do you have any preferences?