Well, that is definitely strange and a different experience from what I am having. Below are the two cables I am using at different locations. They are going between Route10 and S24-POE switches at each site. I have not experienced problems with them so far.
Update:
I have also tried two additional DACs:
XS+DA0001: no link from Route 10 to the Microtik switch at all
Ubiquiti UACC-DAC-SFP10-0.5M: works fine 
But, unfortunately, now I need to deal with several other connection issues that are not related to this topic. 