Enterprise Networking Hardware on Windows Question – Will it work?

[Master Sonic Wisebeard]

So this is a question that I haven’t been able to find an answer for. Will enterprise grade networking hardware work in a windows environment?

For example, could someone purchase something like supermirco’s AOC-S25G-m2S network card

https://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/addon/AOC-S25G-m2S.cfm

and drop it in a desktop pc, purchase a second one for another PC and get the transfer speeds that are advertised? Would window even detect it? Would it know what to do with it?

Could you in theory get a pair of banana’s 100gbit networking cards and connect 2 desktop PC’s with them at full speeds?

 

 

This is purely a would it work question, please don’t reply with “no one would ever need it” or “it’s not worth it / feasible”

 

Thanks in advance

[Electronics Wizardy]

It will work fine in windows, assuming you have drives. Those cards aren't cheap though, and id probabaly get cheaper 10gbe stuff.

[manikyath]

if they have drivers for windows, they'll work just like you would expect a network card to work.

 

i doubt windows' network stack will be happy with "100gigabit networking" seeing the sheer pain linus was already facing with 10 gig.

[Electronics Wizardy]

4 minutes ago, manikyath said:

i doubt windows' network stack will be happy with "100gigabit networking" seeing the sheer pain linus was already facing with 10 gig.

Meh linus doesn't know whats he's doing with networking

 

SMB 3 will work fine with big packets, and getting that much data to it will be a pain, and nfs will probably work a bit better, same with iscsi. Also you don't have to send data. most of the time 100gbe is use for a main link between buildings or to a ISP.

[Master Sonic Wisebeard]

Thanks for the quick reply’s

 

I honestly expected the answer to be a no because enterprise stuff is not nice to deal with but I guess that makes sense, only needing drivers.

 

And yea for me I’d also go the 10gbe route if my storage array could put out the read and write speeds. But it would be fun to have

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, Master Sonic Wisebeard said:

Thanks for the quick reply’s

 

I honestly expected the answer to be a no because enterprise stuff is not nice to deal with but I guess that makes sense, only needing drivers.

 

And yea for me I’d also go the 10gbe route if my storage array could put out the read and write speeds. But it would be fun to have

Windows is a enterprise OS that will support everything you would need in a datacenter, what makes you think it isn't. 

 

If you want cheap speed you can setup infiband, but IPoIB can be a pain on windows.

[manikyath]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Windows is a enterprise OS that will support everything you would need in a datacenter, what makes you think it isn't. 

 

If you want cheap speed you can setup infiband, but IPoIB can be a pain on windows.

under the hood regural ol' desktop windows is essentially identical to windows server.

 

to shocking levels where appareantly certain "nefarious" ways of activating windows 7 appareantly also work on windows server. the things one does if their dreamspark keys decide they dont exist anymore

[Master Sonic Wisebeard]

I suppose I should of mentioned that I meant Windows 10

 

I always thought there was dividing line between consumer copies of windows and what version someone running a data center would use. I didn't know they were bascially the same thing

 

Thanks for the enlightenment! lol

[Blake]

6 hours ago, manikyath said:

i doubt windows' network stack will be happy with "100gigabit networking" seeing the sheer pain linus was already facing with 10 gig.

The windows networking stack is fine. Don't point to a 'media personality' as a network engineer. Some of us know what we are doing.

6 hours ago, manikyath said:

under the hood regural ol' desktop windows is essentially identical to windows server.

 

to shocking levels where appareantly certain "nefarious" ways of activating windows 7 appareantly also work on windows server. the things one does if their dreamspark keys decide they dont exist anymore

Yeah, comments like these make me doubt your proficiency in ability to research a topic. The very same thing can be said about 99% of Linux distros, under the hood they are all running the same kernal.

 

fyi your dream spark key still exists, you just can't be bothered to call the phone number to get the activation count reset. I still have about 10 of them from vista/windows 7 days and every time i use one I need to call em to get the authorizations reset. Heck I have a bunch of 2k3/2k3r2/2k8/2k8r2 and 2012 keys that work just fine (well I'd need to test the 2k3 ones now, but i assume they do).

[manikyath]

31 minutes ago, Blake said:

The very same thing can be said about 99% of Linux distros, under the hood they are all running the same kernal.

 

fyi your dream spark key still exists, you just can't be bothered to call the phone number to get the activation count reset. I still have about 10 of them from vista/windows 7 days and every time i use one I need to call em to get the authorizations reset. Heck I have a bunch of 2k3/2k3r2/2k8/2k8r2 and 2012 keys that work just fine (well I'd need to test the 2k3 ones now, but i assume they do).

first off, if you try and deny that first half, you have no idea how windows is built. and the vareous linux distros share more than just the kernel .

 

and the second half, the reason my dreamspark windows server key doesnt exist anymore is because appareantly those keys deactivate the moment you have *any* hardware change, and the phone line (for belgium at least) is less than helpful, lets just say i quit after being bounced around for the tenth time.

[manikyath]

7 hours ago, Master Sonic Wisebeard said:

I always thought there was dividing line between consumer copies of windows and what version someone running a data center would use. I didn't know they were bascially the same thing

the dividing line is one is polished to something that appeals to the home user, and the other is cut down as much as possible to leave room for what those boxes are going to be running to make it worth their money. on top of that there's a bunch of services on windows server that arent present on windows desktop (active directory, web server, DNS, etc. to name a few). there's no reason a desktop OS couldnt provide these services, but they are features MS wants you go get a server license for, because they are features you'd run on a server.

 

it's more of an "intentional market segmentation", so they can charge the bigger cut of their development cost to those who probably see the most value in their OS. (for example, windows home is the cheapest because in the home people dont *realy* care. windows pro is a slight bit higher, with the main difference being buisiness features like connecting to a domain server for logins, etc. and the vareous flavours of windows server are at the top because in all honesty, at the price most servers destined for a windows server enviroment go, its still a fairly small cut of the budget.)

 

on the linux side there are distro's aimed at the vareous "segments" like windows does. you have, for example,  your regular ol' desktop ubuntu "for human beings" as their slogan says, there's distro's for more advanced users, there's distro's aimed at small servers, at server clusters etc. but essentially nothing is stopping you from running server-specific features on a desktop distro, or the other way around, given that you're willing to work around some oddities that may happen.

for the "homebrew stuff", its appareantly really popular to take a desktop-oriented linux distro, and "manually" skin it down to where it is acceptable for the server side, rather than tossing a server oriented distro on what is very much "just an old desktop computer" and then having to figure out some odd unexpected details  (take note: laptops and server distro's dont like each other, there's too many weird devices in laptops server distros often dont account for.)

[manikyath]

8 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Meh linus doesn't know whats he's doing with networking

 

SMB 3 will work fine with big packets, and getting that much data to it will be a pain, and nfs will probably work a bit better, same with iscsi. Also you don't have to send data. most of the time 100gbe is use for a main link between buildings or to a ISP.

after having some sleep... something sprung to my less sleep deprived mind: didnt linus have a networking guy on paycheck for this stuff? iirc he mentioned somewhere that that guy was the one to point out unexpected issues like high cpu usage on one of their significantly lower spec "test boxes".

 

also, i dont think OP is planning to use this to connect his buildings together in a high troughput scenario, nor will be much more knowledgable than the linus man in this regard seeing he has to ask about this stuff on a forum. not meant as an insult towards OP, but the complexity of using certain hardware thickens significantly the less the user knows about said hardware. gotta keep in mind we're not all IT pro's

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, manikyath said:

didnt linus have a networking guy on paycheck for this stuff?

I think so, but i don't really know whats happening internally.

 

 

 

If you want cheap fast networking, just run 10gbe cards off ebay. No reason to go higer. Your thinking sub 100 for cheap 10gbe stuff.

[manikyath]

3 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

I think so, but i don't really know whats happening internally.

 

 

 

If you want cheap fast networking, just run 10gbe cards off ebay. No reason to go higer. Your thinking sub 100 for cheap 10gbe stuff.

true, which is also why i was kinda pressing on the insanity of considering 100gbe

(not to mention, you'd need pcie 3.0 16x in order to push 100 gigabit to the NIC )

 

EDIT: and btw, if you listen closely to their vlog-style videos, they drop a lot of "hints" about what actually goes on in that server room

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, manikyath said:

2 minutes ago, manikyath said:

they drop a lot of "hints" about what actually goes on in that server room

 

Ive worked ina data center, theres is very messy and hap hazard. 

 

Normally you have a network kvm, pdu, and remote console, so you don't have to ever touch the hardware.

 

Also the cabling is a mess.

[manikyath]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

 

Ive worked ina data center, theres is very messy and hap hazard. 

 

Normally you have a network kvm, pdu, and remote console, so you don't have to ever touch the hardware.

 

Also the cabling is a mess.

my manager at fedex liked my "nonchalant" attitude towards the gear we were working with, ethernet cards were totally swapped on carpet, and we both totally acknowledged the necessity of antistatic straps before tossing them in the trash

 

and the two datacenters i worked at... were cleaner than most, in one case because there was about 10cm under the floor for both fresh air and cabling, so that leaves very little room for mess, and in the other because the manager was a clean wiring freak

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, manikyath said:

clean wiring freak

You better be when you have a 4in or more thing of wire running from one rack to anouther.

[manikyath]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

You better be when you have a 4in or more thing of wire running from one rack to anouther.

you know those 48u cisco switches? how about one of those, fully decked out, all going into said 10cm space under the floor

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, manikyath said:

you know those 48u cisco switches? how about one of those, fully decked out, all going into said 10cm space under the floor

have fun pluggin that in.

 

I have only had to move the 20u ones by main self. There heavy. Really heavy.

[manikyath]

11 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

have fun pluggin that in.

oh trust me, great fun

[Gaub]

Yes it will work! I would get it straight from Mellanox though, it should be cheaper and easier to come by. Model number MCX4121A-ACAT. Mellanox has great driver support for windows. Now you just need a switch that won't cost you both of your arms 

[Falconevo]

The card in question is a Mellanox card which has fantastic driver support in Windows.  Be sure to get the latest driver from Mellanox directly rather than SuperMicro in this instance but the short answer is yes

 

Be aware that the windows network stack is not fantastic when it comes to pushing more than 20Gbit/s around the network.  It needs serious optimisation to get the best from it and your limit will be the read/write speeds of your hard disk(s) rather than the network card itself.  I would personally save money and go for 10Gbit versions as you can usually find them second hand on ebay etc for cheap.

 

Make sure you are using NVMe based SSD's to get the best from it but don't expect full speed unless you are writing to and from memory across the network.

[leadeater]

9 hours ago, manikyath said:

you know those 48u cisco switches? how about one of those, fully decked out, all going into said 10cm space under the floor

 

9 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

have fun pluggin that in.

 

I have only had to move the 20u ones by main self. There heavy. Really heavy.

Dual ToR 48 port SFP+ (QSFP+ uplinks) using DAC cables is the damn worst. Those cables are very thick and not flexible at all and take up so much space, quite a pain to cable manage and if you ever need to remove a single cable from each switch your in for an epic battle of will lol.