Setup a used Aruba S2500 switch and remove stacking ports

Unmanaged Gbe switches usually meet the needs of most households, however, if you want to go to multi-gbe band, things get expensive quickly. Often it would be cheaper to get used or refurbished enterprise hardware, than brand-new consumer-facing Hardware. 

For my case, I was able to acquire an Aruba S2500 48P-4SFP+POE for 115$ pre-tax off eBay. This switch has 4 SFP+ ports that move data at 10Gbps with some small setups. 

1. Factory reset using the switch front menu.
2. invoke GUI management
3. in 10 minutes, go to 172.16.0.254 from a DHCP-connected device
4. if it asks the default username password is: admin admin123

Now our focus shifts to the GUI management portal:

1. finish wizard flow and set appropriate IP for management endpoint
2. we need to upgrade the firmware to partition 0:
3. to utilize the two stacking SFP+ ports
   1. use Putty/SSH and connect to the switch shell
   2. go to enable mode via command then enter your enable password
      en
   3. delete stackings

delete stacking interface stack 1/2
delete stacking interface stack 1/3

At this point, your switch is behaving like an unmanaged switch now. For most use cases you are done. 

Alternatively, you can purchase this updated and beefed-up version of the discontinued switch:

Aruba Instant On 1930 24-Port Gb Ethernet 24xGE PoE (195W), 4X 1G/10G SFP+, L2+ Smart Switch US Cord (JL683A#ABA) currently sold for $434.99