Combining 2 Dual NICs

[ChaosGoW]

Hey LTT.

 

I'm pretty new to networking and and servers but I'm slowly working my way through it with some systems I've built.

 

One of the systems uses a motherboard with a 2 intel NICs which are working together to increase bandwidth. The motherboard is a Asrock C2750D4I. I know the third port is for the IPMI only. The server is running FreeNAS 9.3. I'm using it as a storage server and a plex server (will be moving plex when I can afford another box and using this server as a pure data server for my network).

 

I have ordered an Intel i340T4 NIC which I plan to use with my Main PC because I got a bargain on eBay. If another comes up I'd be happy to nab it but they don't come up cheap very often.

 

My question is, I want to have 4 gigabit ports working together to produce 4 gigabits of bandwidth on my server. Could I combine my current 2 ports with a PCIe NIC with another 2 ports or would I have to scrap the 2 on my motherboard and get a 4 port NIC to make them work together?

 

Obviously the reason I want to do this is to save money since the price difference between a 2 and 4 port Intel NIC is not negligible.

 

Thanks for any help you're able to give <3

[rustikles]

Yeah with link aggregation (LACP) in FreeNAS, you can have any combination of NICs (onboard and add-in) so long as the ethernet driver is supported in BSD. Here's the FreeNAS doc on network setup with link aggregation. Do you have 4 or more concurrent users access the server that would need full gigabit connections or a specific situation where round-robin or failover connection would help you? If not, your money would probably be better spent upgrading something else.

[ChaosGoW]

That's awesome to know it'll work. I do have 4+ people using the network and they all use the NAS (they gave me some money towards it <3) and we all either work from home or do some work at home so any speed we can get would be great as well as the fact we all like to stream movies to our rooms ect. They're not quite as into it as I am so anything I can do to increase speeds and ease their pain to consolidate our media libraries/stuff would help us all.

 

So to be clear, if i were to get one of these and combine it with the 2 onboard ports, I could get 4Gb/s to my main rig with the 4 port version of that card I linked. Correct?

 

As I said, I'm pretty new to this. I've learned a lot in the past couple of weeks but there are still many huge gaps in my knowledge. Learning is really fun though and I'm genuinely loving it! There's so many things I wanna try with servers, so much to do, so much to learn. My plan is to move completely away from commercial stuff like my awful router and build my own boxes for everything.

 

Thank you @rustikles for your help and swift answer <3

[rustikles]

-snip-

Let me clarify: yes, with that pcie NIC plus the onboard NIC's combined in a teaming mode you could get their (almost) combined throughput IF your server can mange that read/write speed. With a 3/4 full RAID z2 array of 6 3TB WD Reds, I can only manage to just slightly over-saturate a single gigabit connection.

 

I actually do the same thing in my apartment with one big NAS to consolidate all our media and have it accessible (Plex server). Unless everyone decided to dump 20GB+ media folders onto the server at the same time (which would never happen), I can't see why it would be worth it to spend and extra $120 on another NIC simply for teaming. 

 

Is an extra 3 minute wait for a file transfer once every 6 months or more really worth the extra money? IMO, not really. Just throw that cash into expanding the pool size or having a backup HDD for swapping before a rebuild.

[rustikles]

-resnip-

Not to mention the fact that your internet connection is probably nowhere near even a gigabit to start with, assuming people working offsite. I don't mean to shut down your idea here, but I just think your money could be better spent on data redundancy or something to that effect  .

[ChaosGoW]

Not to mention the fact that your internet connection is probably nowhere near even a gigabit to start with, assuming people working offsite. I don't mean to shut down your idea here, but I just think your money could be better spent on data redundancy or something to that effect  .

I get your point but I'm a performance junkie through and through, doesn't matter if I need it. I might wait a couple weeks to see if a 4 port card comes up cheap on ebay again but it's good to know that my current plan of buying 2 more ports will do what I want.

 

As for installing extra drives, I can't without building a new box. I already have 8x4TB WD Reds in the FreeNAS box in RaidZ2. The case is the Silverstone DS380 which only has 8 3.5" bays so I'm not gonna expand until I go rack one day,

[rustikles]

I get your point but I'm a performance junkie through and through, doesn't matter if I need it. I might wait a couple weeks to see if a 4 port card comes up cheap on ebay again but it's good to know that my current plan of buying 2 more ports will do what I want.

 

As for installing extra drives, I can't without building a new box. I already have 8x4TB WD Reds in the FreeNAS box in RaidZ2. The case is the Silverstone DS380 which only has 8 3.5" bays so I'm not gonna expand until I go rack one day,

Do you know what kind of read/write speeds you're getting with that? I'm not an expert, but I'd still be surprised if it's over 1.5Gb/s will a single pool. If you have multiple pools, that's a different story.

[ChaosGoW]

Do you know what kind of read/write speeds you're getting with that? I'm not an expert, but I'd still be surprised if it's over 1.5Gb/s will a single pool. If you have multiple pools, that's a different story.

I've been copying large files to test and it's reporting speeds of over to 200MB/s (big b ). Pretty sure the reads will exceed that by a huge margin since there's so many drives. The extra network bandwidth might not help with me putting files on the server but will for sure help me to grab them off faster.

 

I can't test much else until my 4 port NIC comes later this week. I'd be happy to PM you once I've tested it. In case it matters, I'm currently using an 8 Port Netgear switch but I've got a 16 port one coming this week too.

[rustikles]

I've been copying large files to test and it's reporting speeds of over to 200MB/s (big b ). Pretty sure the reads will exceed that by a huge margin since there's so many drives. The extra network bandwidth might not help with me putting files on the server but will for sure help me to grab them off faster.

 

I can't test much else until my 4 port NIC comes later this week. I'd be happy to PM you once I've tested it. In case it matters, I'm currently using an 8 Port Netgear switch but I've got a 16 port one coming this week too.

Yeah sure! I'd be interested to see how that works out for you.

[simson0606]

maybe i'm wrong but doesn't teaming also need a switch that supports it?

[rustikles]

maybe i'm wrong but doesn't teaming also need a switch that supports it?

Either a managed switch that supports layer 3 link aggregation (which most all will) or, in my case, a dumb switch and a pfSense box. I did assume @ChaosGoW had fairly quality network hardware. You may want to check before any big purchases though, you're right simson.

[ChaosGoW]

I have a pretty cheap switch atm. This is the exact one I am using and I've ordered one of these that I found used on ebay. If I have to get a better one I can deal with that because I haven't even got the network card for my NAS server yet. I'll continue to rely on the 2 onboard ports until a card I want comes up cheaper.

 

If either of those switches aren't up for the task, could you recommend one that is?

[Broseephus]

You are going to need a managed switch to create the link aggregation groups. Or you may be able to use a pfsense box to accomplish this. Not sure how that works I've never used pfsense...

 

Also you are aware that even with all this setup you will not see >1GB/sec transfers right? 

[rustikles]

-snip-

 

If either of those switches aren't up for the task, could you recommend one that is?

 

You're looking for a switch that supports the 802.3ad (LACP) specification. Newegg search. There are plenty from ~$50 and up.

-snip-

 

Also you are aware that even with all this setup you will not see >1GB/sec transfers right? 

Yeah I mentioned that to him. Read/write speeds for his pool wont be all that high, but the impression I got was that this is more of a "for when I need it" kind of project. In regards to my pfSense box, I'm frankly not sure how LAN LACP is even functioning.

 

On my network: FreeNAS box (LACP lagg0)---->unmanaged Cisco switch ~$25---->pfSense box.

 

However, with multiple clients transferring files to FreeNAS, I can clearly see each interface in lagg0 becoming active with each added user in the FreeNAS reporting window. All ports are gigabit, and total lagg0 transfer speed is ~1.75Gb/s. I don't recall making any special changes within pfSense either. The FreeNAS box has a self-specified IP address for lagg0.

[ChaosGoW]

I'll get there in the end and if I've learned anything, it's that you can never have too much spare stuff lying around. I plan to do a lot more with my network that involves upgrading my home theater setup so a spare switch or two will help with that. I plan to add a server or two to control some stuff that'll help me learn more as well as some fun stuff like game/web servers. The plan is to upgrade the entire network.

 

So if I need to buy another switch to do what I want then I can and will but not until I know I need it. I can always try with what I've got and upgrade later.

 

Thanks for the help guys, much appreciated.

 

Time to bury my head in more research <3