What are your go-to brands for any electronic, networking, computing accessories or peripherals?
What are your go-to brands for any electronic, networking, computing accessories or peripherals?
Hi all, since ya'll are self hosters, I'm sure you all deal with all sorts of different pieces of hardware, accessories, peripherals, and what not; just wondering if you could please share your favorite, solid, "go to" brands for overall things you need for your setup such as cables (all types), adapters, dongles, power accessories, hubs & docks, flash drives, you name it! I'm sure it varies depending on exactly what type of equipment you're looking for but just looking for overall good brands to stick with for such things. I obviously know the main ones like Anker, Cable Matters, Ugreen, maybe Belkin, Idk. Would love to hear your recommendations! Thank you
None. One year, Lenovo has the best Linux support. Another it might not. One year, Logi makes a solid mouse. Another year they do not. One year, a company makes a great product. Another year there is a privacy scandal.
Look at what devs of the projects you use recommend, and read reviews withing 3 months of your purchase. Don't pick a brand, pick a product.
Open source project device support pages are always my first stop. If you have access to a git repo for the project, use gource to visualize who is doing what and where within the project recently. This will make it obvious what hardware the main devs are invested in the most, and therefore what will have the best support and user experience.
Routers - Netgate / pfSense. Best router GUI I've found. If you understand what you want to make happen, chances are you can figure out how to make it happen without touching a CLI. And generally free of Cisco for license bullshit.
Routing and WiFi- Ubiquiti. Not as flexible as pfSense but even easier to use and if you do both routing and WiFi with them you get a bunch of cool analytics. Their surveillance package is great too as long as you use their cameras, pretty much the best mobile surveillance app I've found. Door access system also gets a mention.
Synology for almost everything they do, but particularly storage, backup, surveillance (they support almost every camera, albeit with a license requirement) and hosting of self hosted apps using a nice docker GUI. Not as much bang for buck vs. an old PC in terms of CPU power, but very easy to use.
For home automation- Home Assistant or HomeSeer. Both are open platforms that support almost everything. Home Assistant pulls lightly ahead for me because it's free and has more 3rd party integrations, even if it has a steeper hearing curve in some areas and some rough edges that require tweaking for basic usability (specifically, Z-Wave requires the 'z-wave js ui' plugin to take real control over a Z-Wave mesh, and Z-Wave door locks need the Keymaster plugin to get any sort of user code management, neither are straightforward to install). That said- pair Home Assistant with a Z-Wave dongle and some Inovelli light switches and you have a really beautiful setup with insane flexibility.
Remember power!
First and foremost, well-grounded power is essential. I haven't done the whole house thing yet, but I am thinking about it and curious to know of other's stories.
For surge protectors, I like GE wall taps for form factor and Furman racks when there is space & need.
For an uninterruptible power supply, I like APC. While they aren't made in the USA like they used to (RIP), they have been reliable for me.
Network (ISP Modem, WIFI, Switch) and tower CPU are all driven by UPS power. APC UPS, at least, is always drawing off the battery, so the upstream electronics are protected...a massive surge is far more likely to take out the battery. For laptops, surge protection is enough.
I have not yet surge-protected the ISP lower power input... this is a real risk! I found a cheap one off Amazon, but I am worried it will degrade the network --> whole house may be better.
Note - I have had a lightning strike get sent down the cable line, enter the home, blow out the cable modem, traverse into the network switch, blow out the switch, and nuke every active ethernet port (NAS, Apple TV, etc.), as well as jump the wire into low power security, physically blowing a hard-wired security panel off the wall and damaging a few hard-wired security points. Pretty crazy!
Servers: Supermicro. Dell in a pinch
Switches: HPE Aruba for 10gig, or Mellanox for 100gig
Routers: I'm not that picky, but I use Fortigate as I scavenged some leftovers at work
UPS: Eaton
Network cards: Intel for 10gig, IBM for 8 or 16gig, Mellanox for 100gig
Harddrives: Exos
RAID stuff: LSI MegaRaid.
GPU: Don't really care, but I have a bunch of NVidia Quadro.Most of the above preferences are due to scavenging leftover hardware at work.
For networks, much of it depends on budget and requirement. Do you want home security cameras on your network? Are you someone who works with large files all the time? Do you have gig plus Internet speeds? Do you own or rent? Lots of factors can affect choices. Start from there and build the infrastructure that works for your need. Don't go looking to build a monster you'll never really get moving, that's a waste. Brand will become a factor once you look at the capabilities you need, you'll see names come up over and over. At the consumer level, there are a few but price is also a factor. Not much help, I know.
I use a VPS for the vast majority of my stuff to be clear, but from my experiences with PC building in particular, there's not a PSU manufacturer I'd ever want to use anymore other than EVGA. The PSU in my PC randomly started dying some months back, randomly completely cutting power when it'd go over a certain voltage draw it was rated for and could previously handle without breaking a sweat, to the point that it severely disrupted both work AND play for me, when it came to heavier work tasks or heavy games. They replaced it for me while only requiring minimal information (I think the serial numbers, information about how it was behaving, and what tasks I do with my computer so they'd know I didn't kill it by doing insane Bitcoin mining 24/7 or other cryptocurrency stuff, which they do not cover under warranty), and not only that, but since they did not have any more of my old model available (a 750 G3), they instead gave me a newer and better one (a 750 G5).
For network cables, FS.com. Their specialty is fiber optics and they have good transceivers and cables for really cheap prices and they also sell a tool to flash vendor info onto transceivers so if you have some picky proprietary box you can still use generic transceivers with it. Their copper products, DACs, regular cat6 patch cables, etc are good too. I haven't tried their NICs or switches though.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters Git Popular version control system, primarily for code NAS Network-Attached Storage NUC Next Unit of Computing brand of Intel small computers NVR Network Video Recorder (generally for CCTV) PSU Power Supply Unit Plex Brand of media server package PoE Power over Ethernet RAID Redundant Array of Independent Disks for mass storage SSD Solid State Drive mass storage Unifi Ubiquiti WiFi hardware brand VPS Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting)
11 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 7 acronyms.
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Server rack and shelves: NavePoint. Amazing customer support; great products.
Whatever's cheapest lol
I have been trying to replace all my devices that use external power bricks with usb C cables and GAN power adapters. You can get barrel adapters for most things and it lets me clear up a lot of space. Anker and Ugreen have been my picks in the past but they seem to have been increasing their prices considerably and I have had pretty good luck with a company called Baseus.