Hello I’m getting into homelabs because I wana get into the IT field, I think this would be a really good way for me to learn stuff. My plan is to have an ESXI server a switch and a physical NAS. I would like to connect the NAS to the ESXI server and have the VM images stored on it. I’m sure other projects will involve the NAS but other than that it will just be file transfer and storage. So to the main question, I’m looking for a good 2.5Gbe NIC. I don’t really intend to do any super intensive stuff with the VMs like no media stuff.
There are plenty of cheap switches with dual 10G SFP+ and 2.5G ports. Personally I’m using QNAP QSW-2104-2S such that workstation and main server are connected with SFP+ and couple other devices to 2.5 ports. Best of both worlds if you asked me. There are cheaper solutions too and ServeTheHome did good comparison on their youtube channel.