Depending what you’re looking to accomplish, setting up a cluster in VMs (VirtualBox, Fusion, cloud provider, etc) may meet your needs without having to buy anything.
- Don't think having a few 1Gbit can replace a >10Gbit. Ceph doesn't use such bonds optimal. I already asked about this years ago. Having a 10Gbe might make a SBC solution more costly than estimated.
10GE is out of scope for sure, but a note about bonding: more than once I’ve seen NICs bonded improperly, or tested improperly. * Bonding doesn’t make a single faster interface - you need multiple clients to be able to utilize it well * If the hash policy isn’t set right, it’s easy to have *all* of your traffic routed over a single link, and your throughput will be capped at half what you expect