FC Card for freenas

[m4rv1n]

Hi to all.
I had a look to freenas and use it over ethernet with dual 1gbe . Now I see the speed over ethernet is limited so I want try to boost performance, 10gbe look too much expensive so I will go with something like Fiber channel.
The setup will be freenas with fc card attached to vsphere (esxi) with another fc card. To low the price I think to go for 4gb fc card.
Someone know which cheap card can be used with freenas and vsphere (5.5U2)?
Thanks to all

 

[sfcredfox]

Not saying it can't be done, but it looks like it's not offically supported:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/freenas-with-emc-arrays.25122/#post-156834
It might work though:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/so-you-want-to-test-fc-target-mode.21568/

 

[m4rv1n]

If is not official supported, i don't wont to risk.
Do you think is possible to go for 4Gb with 4 x 1Gbe and mpio? I tried this but maximum speed was 2Gb (from local test the disk's speed was about 3,5Gb/s).
Thank you!

 

[lucid]

Mpio with FreeNAS and ESXi work great, I've used this with 5x1gb connections before. The key is you must run a command in ESXi to force a more aggresive round robin policy.

This should work:
http://www.jpaul.me/2011/10/tweaking-vmwares-round-robin-settings/

 

[m4rv1n]

I will try it asap, thank you! Do you know if this parameter is present also from windows server 2008R2 ? My last test was from this OS and the "wall" for external data transmission was about 2Gbit/s with 4Gbe (local disk was about 3,5Gb/s).

 

[Norleif]

I picked up a pair of 10GBit Chelsio S320E with SR optics for about 80$ each.
At the time of writing there are 8 more left. Search ebay for "S320E-SR-XFP"

 

[m4rv1n]

It's a good option, thank you.

 

[m4rv1n]

At the end I've found a pair of qlogic 4GB dual port hba for 30$ each and it works perfectly! I've disabled iscsi port and enabled fc port for exclude conflict operation.

 

[kspare]

One thing they will mention is that Intel ncis work the best.

 

[m4rv1n]

Yes, but is also expensive. I'm happy with the cards I've found.