10GbE cards and cables

[paddy-stone]

Hey guys, I am thinking about getting 2 or 3 10 Gigabit cards and cables. I am hoping you can help me choose suitable cards and cables.

 

I have an HP proliant microserver gen 8 with a dual core G1610T CPU IIRC... and believe it has a 16x gen 2 slot spare. I am running freenas 11.2-u6 on it.

My main PC is a Ryzen 7 1700 with an MSI Tomahawk mobo, running windows 1903 IIRC... has a spare x16 slot for the card.

And my backup server is rocking a dual core Athlon 200GE with an Asrock AB350M Pro 4 mobo and also running freenas 11.2-u6... has a spare x16 slot for the card.

 

The card(s) I have been looking at is https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-NC523SFP-Dual-Port-10GbE-Adapter-593717-B21-593742-001-593715-001-PCIe-PCI-E/142620536448?_trksid=p2485497.m4902.l9144

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-NC523SFP-Dual-Port-10GbE-593717-B21-593742-001-593715-001-PCIe-Server-Adapter/292415340915?_trksid=p2485497.m4902.l9144

And I would really appreciate if someone with soem insight could tell me if the card will work without too much painful CLI in freenas (or preferably none required), will work with windows for my main pc too?

And if you could point me in the direction of some suitable cables with modules (the Hp card doesdn't come with them), am thinking DAC modules would be fine? and in lengths of 2,3 or 5M please.

The reason for my asking, is I have been looking at modules, but most of them say stuff like works with cisco and specific models, same for hp and so on.... so that's left me thinking that even the modules could have compatability issues, or downright not work if I bought the wrong ones.... please take pity on my ignorance of these things and help, thanks

 

[edit] Also the reason I have been looking at these particular cards, is firstly for the 2 port config... this would allow to me to connect to each of the other 2 systems directly... or if I thought it's worth it, they support

Quote

40 Gbps aggregate full duplex, dual ports

 

[Windows7ge]

Unfortunately I have not used either of those cards in FreeNAS or Windows.

 

10GBASE-SR that I know of that are plug'n'play with both are:

Mellanox ConnectX-2 SFP+ (single port)

Broadcom BCM85710S (dual port)

 

Then I used these transceivers for both. Have been working fine. (though 1 did show up D.O.A.)

[paddy-stone]

Just now, Windows7ge said:

Unfortunately I have not used either of those cards in FreeNAS or Windows.

 

10GBASE-SR that I know of that are plug'n'play with both are:

Mellanox ConnectX-2 SFP+ (single port)

Broadcom BCM85710S (dual port)

 

Then I used these transceivers for both. Have been working fine. (though 1 did show up D.O.A.)

Ahh I see, thanks for the info once again. I'll have a look at those.

[Windows7ge]

23 minutes ago, paddy-stone said:

thanks for the info

You can find those mellanox cards for ~$20.

[Xplo1t]

Chelsio is the way to go.  HP, Dell and others resell their NICS under their brand.  The T520 cars are plug and play and have a ton of options for adapters.  I personally went with the T520-BT models so that I could reuse the existing copper lines in that I previously wired up.

[paddy-stone]

18 hours ago, Xplo1t said:

Chelsio is the way to go.  HP, Dell and others resell their NICS under their brand.  The T520 cars are plug and play and have a ton of options for adapters.  I personally went with the T520-BT models so that I could reuse the existing copper lines in that I previously wired up.

Thanks, I'll have a look at those too if I can find them in the UK

 

[edit] These?  https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Chelsio-dual-port-10gb-s-sfp-LOW-PROFILE-BRACKET-110-1088-30-CC2-N320E-SR/132906378590?hash=item1ef1d6655e:g:hX0AAOSw4zdcLMgH

 

If yes, that's pretty decent price for dual ports too... for modules with DAC, do the cisco ones work? what about others?  sorry for the questions, just don't want to walk into a minefield of buying the wrong modules + DAC cables, thanks

 

[Xplo1t]

I was referring to the T50 series of cards.  Just an example, but you can probably find them for a better price.

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/DELL-J6VY6-0J6VY6-Chelsio-T520-CR-10GbE-2-Port-PCIe-Unified-Wire-Adapter-Card/133081499107?hash=item1efc4685e3:g:jOQAAOSwr6hc~7oL

 

I would suggest going direclty to the FreeNAS forum on their site and reading the info.

 

Also, this is a good start for reference.

 

https://www.servethehome.com/buyers-guides/top-hardware-components-freenas-nas-servers/

 

 

[paddy-stone]

17 hours ago, Xplo1t said:

I was referring to the T50 series of cards.  Just an example, but you can probably find them for a better price.

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/DELL-J6VY6-0J6VY6-Chelsio-T520-CR-10GbE-2-Port-PCIe-Unified-Wire-Adapter-Card/133081499107?hash=item1efc4685e3:g:jOQAAOSwr6hc~7oL

 

I would suggest going direclty to the FreeNAS forum on their site and reading the info.

 

Also, this is a good start for reference.

 

https://www.servethehome.com/buyers-guides/top-hardware-components-freenas-nas-servers/

 

 

I found these  https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/10G-Network-Kit-2x-Chelsio-N320E-10Gbit-10GBe-Low-profile-1x3m-SFP-Cisco-cable/254368876061

 

Quote

10GB Ethernet Kit including

 

2x Chelsio 10G Ethernet CC2-N320E-SR network adapters, P/N 110-1088-30, with Low profile brackets, factory sealed.

1x Cisco SFP+ Twinax 3m cable (P/N SFP-H10GB-CU3M)

 

The adapters are new, factory sealed; the cable is second hand.

 

 

Supported on Windows 7, Windows 10, Windows Server 2008, 

Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2016

Linux, FreeBSD, FreeNAS, MacOS, Citrix XenServer

VMWare Esxi on 5.5 version only.

TOE iSCSI iWarp supported

 

Windows driver can be downloaded from:

http://service.chelsio.com

(select the N320E) 

Seem good, price pretty decent too.

 

[edit] Nevermind, looked at some reviews/troubleshooting stuff and there's a few people had MAJOR problems with them. I'll keep looking.

[Xplo1t]

Just my opinion, but spend a little more for the stuff that is known to work and avoid pointless misery trying to troubleshoot a cheaper alternative.  The T5 series of Chelsio cards are known to work well and are even sold by iXsystems.   I found their stuff to be top notch, even compared to Intel, which has always been a solid choice in network cards.

[paddy-stone]

2 hours ago, Xplo1t said:

Just my opinion, but spend a little more for the stuff that is known to work and avoid pointless misery trying to troubleshoot a cheaper alternative.  The T5 series of Chelsio cards are known to work well and are even sold by iXsystems.   I found their stuff to be top notch, even compared to Intel, which has always been a solid choice in network cards.

Do you happen to know of any dual port 10 gig cards that are known to work with win 10 and freenas?  I am willing to pay more for those for sure, as they are more useful as I could link the 2 servers I have to my main pc and each other... If I have to get single port cards, I'll just link my servers together for much better sync speeds, and will be most welcome for when I re-do my storage array and have to copy data over again

 

If it seemed I was looking for the cheapest, that's not necessarily the goal here, I just would prefer dual port cards and didn't know if anyone knew if the HP dual cards would work well with freenas mostly, win 10 is secondary. As long as the servers are linked, the desktop is just a bonus for the few times I transfer stuff to and from it... not often at all.

I can get 2 mellanox cards and a 3M cable for around £60 delivered, which is good, just holding out hope that someone DOES know of dual port cards that work well.

 

[Xplo1t]

Did you look at this link?

 

https://www.servethehome.com/buyers-guides/top-hardware-components-freenas-nas-servers/

 

The cards listed in that link work well in Windows.

[paddy-stone]

1 minute ago, Xplo1t said:

Did you look at this link?

 

https://www.servethehome.com/buyers-guides/top-hardware-components-freenas-nas-servers/

 

The cards listed in that link work well in Windows.

Arrrghhh! - sorry I must have missed it, I was being distracted at the time by the dog... sorry man, I appreciate the help and your patience, I will look now and bookmark it, thank you

 

[Xplo1t]

13 minutes ago, paddy-stone said:

Arrrghhh! - sorry I must have missed it, I was being distracted at the time by the dog... sorry man, I appreciate the help and your patience, I will look now and bookmark it, thank you

 

No worries.  I've just spent a lot of time in the last few months trying different things and trying to filter it down to what I found works.  

 

I'm now messing around with 40Gbe cards and learning a lot of lessons along the way.  The biggest constant that I've found is newer Chelsio cards just work well across the board and have a lot of nice features.