The reason I went with the Netgear XS724EM was that it met all the requirements that I needed for the SDDC lab.
- 1U short depth rack mount
- 24 10G ports
- Jumbo frames (9k MTU)
- LAG capable
- 802.1q L2 VLAN capable
This allowed me to connect all ports for the 4 Supermicro E200-8D including the OOO management port, the dual 1G ports and the dual 10G ports, leaving 4 free to be used for the other connectivity.
This left the remaining 2 ports which are shared between ports 23T/24T (copper) and 23F/24F (fiber) to potentially use for uplinks.
Cabling wise each server is directly connected using CAT6a cables through the middle of the case with the cable connectivity like this.
ESX-VSAN1
| Port 1 | Port 3 | Port 5 | Port 7 | Port 9 |
| BMC | 1G-A | 1G-B | 10G-A | 10G-B |
ESX-VSAN2
| Port 11 | Port 13 | Port 15 | Port 17 | Port 19 |
| BMC | 1G-A | 1G-B | 10G-A | 10G-B |
ESX-VSAN3
| Port 2 | Port 4 | Port 6 | Port 8 | Port 10 |
| BMC | 1G-A | 1G-B | 10G-A | 10G-B |
ESX-VSAN4
| Port 12 | Port 14 | Port 16 | Port 18 | Port 20 |
| BMC | 1G-A | 1G-B | 10G-A | 10G-B |