This is no longer the case as of 24.04.0 (though be aware that there is a bug causing excessive swap usage and slowdowns related to this that will be fixed in 24.04.1, set to be released later this month, there is a workaround for this though until that point).
I typically prefer to stick with Intel as they have great compatibility. I haven’t had much interaction with Marvell so no idea how well it would work in SCALE. Also had no idea TRENDnet made NICs, I’ve got tens of their PoE injectors laying about.
X710-DA2 also has two SFP ports, so you’ve got the potential to scale (pun intended) there with multipathing.
Nothing a quick Amazon search for “PVC dust filter sheet” won’t fix (nice and cheap too)
cpupower perhaps? I haven’t used powertop before
Tiredness getting the better of me… powertop exists in SCALE, and I’ve used it, God knows what I was thinking of.
If you’re looking to play around with VMs I’d recommend creating a small mirror pool to run them from, even if it’s a 2x2-way mirror of small-ish SSDs with a replication task to back up to the primary storage pool. Mirrors are recommended for block-storage due to the higher IOPS (although it looks like you’ve done a lot of research already, so you may already know this :P)
Have probably missed a lot, it’s 2 in the morning and my eyes have started going halfway through my reply.