New year, new challenges.

Some changes are coming and I need to integrate my work and ideas a little more.

On this occasion, I will share my experiences regarding equipment and tools that are worth having or at least worth familiarizing yourself with.

Servers:
Supermicro - the best price/performance ratio, many elements have standard sockets as in normal PCs, so you do not have to buy more expensive dedicated fans.
Quanta - a Taiwanese company that produces servers ordered by Facebook, Rackspace and Cloudflare. I haven't played with them personally, but a friend who had several of them praised the workmanship and the way of assembling the elements.
Fujitsu/Dell/HP/Lenovo - standard servers where each manufacturer has its own plugins. Generally if you're in a corporate setting you might look at them, but personally I'd go with supermicro. Support for these companies is no longer the same as it was a few years ago.
NEC/Lenovo (thinclient) - for your own home needs, as low energy servers.

Storage:
Supermicro - storage is also a server :) and ZFS or CEPHA can be installed anywhere.
Netapp - a very cool company, but expensive, they make sure everything works. It depends whether for yourself or for your company.
Qnap/Synology - for companies that need something more than just storage, but do not have money for other equipment. Personally, I started with equipment from both companies, and I liked Qnap because I could do more things + more power at a similar price.

Network cards:
Solarflare - cloudflare uses them, you can see tests on their blog. I had several of their cards and they worked perfectly.
Intel X520/X710 - good cards, I also had no problems with them. They can be picked up at good prices at auctions.

Transceiver:
FibreStore (FS.com) - the best transceiver I have ever used. Cheap and reliable. Compared to other companies, these practically do not break down (1/500 within 3 years).

Disks:
Micron 7450 Pro NVMe - very good NVMe drives, they last a long time.
Crusial MX500 SSD - great SSD drives, price/quality is probably unbeatable.
WD RED Plus HDD - when you don't need speed or capacity, these are very good drives. Mostly quiet :)
Lexar NQ100 SSD - instead of Crusial MX500 which can sometimes be overpriced.

Switches and routers:
Juniper - a class of its own. Powerful and stable machines.
Mikrotik - I like them, you can set everything up and they are cheap. They may not have enough power for larger environments, but it will normally stall.
PC Engines APU.4D4 - interesting boards from Taiwan, you can play with your own little routers :)

SBC:
pine64 - strong boards with good documentation and a pretty good price.
raspberry pi - nice boards but recently they have become very expensive. If you don't need them, I recommend taking pine64 or arduino clones (for smaller projects) :)

OS:
FreeBSD - if you need high network stack speed or greater compatibility, this is the only right system :)
OpenBSD - if you need a very secure OS by default, this is probably the only choice. Very good package manager, I love it, although it is slow.
Antix - debian without systemd :) at the moment it's probably the best replacement for Debian I've found.
Crux - I'm constantly testing half Linux, half BSD. It looks good, but it's hard to judge.
Artix - Arch without systemd. I'm still using it at the moment, but after the latest updates I see a significant drop in quality and problems with dependencies. It is also possible that it will migrate to another system.
Debian - I have one Debian machine left. Unfortunately, since version 11 with new versions of systemd it is getting worse. So it will most likely disappear from use soon, but it will still remain in my heart :)

Deployment automation:
ansible - makes work very easy.
bash - obviously, the default option is the best :)

Balancing:
haproxy - mega powerful front balancer.
relayd - LB made by OpenBSD, simple and efficient. I haven't tested it like Haproxy, but for smaller projects I practically only use it.

TOR and I2P:
i2pd.website - the most efficient i2p network daemon.
tor - tor :)

Communication:
XMPP Ejabber (xmpp - server) - perfect, free and scalable.
conversation (xmpp - client) - app for Android (apparently secure - download only from the website, not from the Google store because it is paid there)
psi+ (xmpp - client) - it seems to be the best for the computer, but it's a bit of fun to configure.
gajime (xmpp - client) - on a computer, it has everything you need and is secured.
ergo (irc - server) - most configuration possibilities.
weechat (irc - client) - the most convenient for me.

Network management:
Netbox - a powerful hardware and network inventory tool. Great possibilities, but a lot of clicking. Unless you write your own scripts, then it's cool :)
phpIPAM - address management that is super convenient and easy to use.
Netdisco - when you have a large DC, I can't imagine working without it :) MAC and IP correlation, port and switch, priceless.
Smokeping - a nice option to monitor what is happening on the external network. You can easily spot network problems when you observe a lot of hosts in the world.
LibreNMS - super cool for monitoring network devices.
Zabbix - everything monitoring system :) A good system, very flexible, but you have to be careful with configuring your triggers.
Suricata - better results than snort, at least this is the data on the network. Configuration is simple, reading logs is difficult, but it can be bypassed by sending it to ELK.

Login system:
Wazuh (SIEM) - still testing possibilities, but looks promising.
Graylog - a simple and powerful log system (the community version has no cool features :( )
ELK - a log harvester, but sometimes I have the impression that it is overrated. Personally, I prefer Graylog.

BGP + ddos protection system:
Arbor/Wanguard - great ddos protection systems. Of course, it's paid, and if we run a business, sometimes it's worth paying for peace of mind :)
silk - like arbor/wanguard but open source.
BIRD/RFF/exabgp - best for routing (BGP/OSPF/RIP) - BIRD was the most convenient for me :)

Useful office tools:
neovim - the editor I use almost all the time :)
claws mail/neomutt - reliable so far. Thunderbird and Outlook is bad, like all Mozilla and M$.
mc - I probably won't be able to explain it :)
basilisk - Firefox-based browser, created by former Pale Moon developers. It does not send data to Mozilla, Google or CloudFlare.
uMatrix - an add-on for Basilisk or other browsers to block unwanted requests. Other add-ons don't have the approach if you set it up right.
git - just :) for maintaining software versions and other projects. You really don't need anything else.
matrix - chat for ala teams (jitsi or xmpp as a more secure alternative)
Nexcloud - disk cloud and other possibilities that Google Cloud has (personally I don't use it anymore, but it's a very nice and scalable solution)
redmine - project and knowledge base management (super convenient)

SmartHome:
HomeAssistant - at the moment I have not found a better substitute for home automation

Graphics:
Darktable - like opensource lightroom

I hope there are people who will find my list useful.

Remember, it doesn't matter what tools you use. It's important that they are comfortable for you :)