Alternatives to 10gbe?

[jgreco]

Hey, also... I know this is unrelated a bit (except an upgrade could be this with a new samsung 850 pro nvme m.2 - phew, just thinking about it)

http://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=D1540D4I-2L2T#Specifications

Naw, the ultimate "want this" board is the D1540D4U-2T2O8R

Two 10G copper ports, two 10G SFP+ ports. LSI 3008. Up to 128GB RAM. And two PCIe slots available on top of that. Total awesomesauce. I could use these as NAS units. I could use these as ESXi hypervisors.

The only bad compromise seems to be the Marvell-supported M.2 slots, but who knows, maybe they'll work fine. Doesn't hurt to try.

 

[tvsjr]

Have you been able to find a price for any of the AsRockRack D1540 boards? I need to build two new ESXi hypervisors and these would be perfect... unfortunately, the Supermicro equivalent is about a grand. I can't find anyone selling the Asrock product...

 

[jgreco]

No. Not available quite yet. I hope to persuade them to get me one for eval.

And yes they'd make pretty great hypervisors. For applications where you don't need absolute peak performance, the onboard 3008 plus 10G means there's sufficient I/O capacity without touching the PCIe slots, and SSD is cheap enough that you may be able to run SSD instead of HDD which dramatically reduces the value of a RAID+cache+BBU. Considering that a decent LSI 3108 setup runs around $700-$800, I don't even really care that much what the board costs. An X10SRW plus E5-1650 plus LSI 3108 combo runs around $1500. If it's cheaper than that, and it performs similarly, the opex savings from reduced power consumption is a massive win.

 

[BigDave]

If it's cheaper than that

The marketing dept. can smell us coming.
Hopefully they will consider it a Bundled Configuration. lol

 

[tvsjr]

No. Not available quite yet. I hope to persuade them to get me one for eval. :)

And yes they'd make pretty great hypervisors. For applications where you don't need absolute peak performance, the onboard 3008 plus 10G means there's sufficient I/O capacity without touching the PCIe slots, and SSD is cheap enough that you may be able to run SSD instead of HDD which dramatically reduces the value of a RAID+cache+BBU. Considering that a decent LSI 3108 setup runs around $700-$800, I don't even really care that much what the board costs. An X10SRW plus E5-1650 plus LSI 3108 combo runs around $1500. If it's cheaper than that, and it performs similarly, the opex savings from reduced power consumption is a massive win.

Make sure to report back when you get one! Unfortunately, having bought a new home and dropping 80 Gs into a remodel, the CapEx investment is a bit of a challenge... considering I can put together a nice dual E5-2670 128GB box from spare parts and eBay (with proper testing) in the $500-750 range (using some care and hunting for deals, of course).

Decisions, decisions... :)

 

[jgreco]

The marketing dept. can smell us coming.

"Speak for yourself!" ;-)