Would It Hurt To Document The Device You Sent Me?

I am actually good at this computer stuff. It is what I do. So I get frustrated when I order hardware and it doesn’t work.

A month ago, I ordered a Mini-ITX board. It was cheap, and it wasn’t 17×17 cm, it was 17x19cm. Which didn’t fit in the case. The low profile CPU cooler/fan I ordered was too tall, so I needed to get a shorter unit. It just wasn’t worth the fight.

I ordered a new Mini-ITX board. This was supposed to be the right size. Not only was it the wrong size, it only had 3 SATA ports, not the 4 on the board I ordered.

That was taken care of with still another motherboard purchase. This time all was good. And amazingly, I didn’t have to wait 2 weeks for the board to get here from China.

Everything is installed, I install the PCI SFP+ NIC, it won’t power up. I don’t know if the card is bad but I replaced the card and that machine is now in production.

Switches are the next big issue. I gave up trying to find a cheap switch, I ordered a new switch, the same as the last I purchased. It should just work.

This switch is an 8 port SFP+ unit, similar to the one in the featured image. It is powered by a 12v DC wall wart.

What arrived was a plastic box with 8 RJ45 connectors. Similar switches can be found on Amazon for under $8. To make it pass the Amazon inspectors, they threw in a free USB-A to USB-C connector. That was returned and a refund was issued.

So I ordered another L3 switch. It arrived in short order. When I powered it up, the power light came on. Then the SYS light started blinking.

Read the manual. Green blinken SYS light means the unit is starting up. Figure that it might be that the unit isn’t fully configured. No problem, I connected it to the network.

Still the blinken light. I scan the network where the device is supposed to be. No response.

Well, the instructions don’t mention the “console” port on the unit (missing from the image because they used the wrong image on the Amazon listing). I ordered a generic console cable to watch the boot sequence, maybe I can spot what went wrong.

What went wrong? Nothing.

The unit is working exactly as it should. I’ve configured it, ready to go into production. The documentation is wrong about what the green blinken light means.

Frustration with hardware, yet this time it is working correctly.

Once this device is in place, every machine, but one, will have at least on 10Gbit fiber link to the main back plain network. Every machine will have a connection to the management network.

As a side effect, it means that each data closet will have at least two fibers into the closet for redundant backup links.

Oh, this also means I can consider using bonded links to get 20G bit transfer rates. That will be cool.