Where do you guys find the best deals on off-lease enterprise gear? (Canada/US)

Hey everyone,

I’m an Infrastructure/Site Reliability Engineer building out a multi-node, distributed Zero-Trust Edge Gateway and a local AI inference lab. I am trying to build a reliable pipeline for sourcing used, refurbished, or off-lease enterprise hardware. I am not looking to buy directly from anyone here, I am just hoping to get pointed in the right direction.

Does anyone have go-to online liquidators, trustworthy eBay storefronts, or IT e-waste refurbishers (based in either the US or Canada) that consistently have killer deals?

Before I list the hardware, addressing the elephant in the room: Why am I looking for UniFi switches if I'm studying for my CCNA? Simple. At my current job, the entire network stack is Ubiquiti UniFi. Furthermore, in my recent interviews for enterprise and AI data center roles, I am seeing a massive industry shift toward UniFi infrastructure. I need to physically replicate that exact ecosystem at home for work and interview prep, while I virtualize my Cisco routing in GNS3/EVE-NG for the certification.

To give you an idea of the tier of hardware I am currently hunting for:

1. Managed Switches (Ubiquiti UniFi or Cisco)

• Looking for 8-port 2.5GbE switches with at least one 10G SFP+ uplink so I don't bottleneck my 3 Gbps symmetric fiber line.

• Needs full VLAN and STP support for network segmentation.

2. Enterprise Mini PCs (Lenovo Tiny M720q/M920q or Dell OptiPlex Micro)

• Sourcing nodes for heavy Proxmox virtualization (Nginx, Keycloak, Zeek).

• Needs to support i5/i7 processors and 32GB of RAM minimum.

• Note: I'm specifically hunting for the Lenovo M720q/M920q series because they have a hidden internal PCIe slot for adding a 10G NIC later.

3. Raspberry Pi 5 (8GB Models)

• Sourcing for dedicated network management nodes (Pi-hole, WireGuard, Grafana).

If you have a trusted site or a specific vendor you use to score cheap enterprise networking gear or Micro PCs, please drop the name or link below. I have no problem paying cross-border shipping for solid deals.

Thanks in advance!