Issue with X710 10GbE SFP+

[xnaron]

If you connect two cards via fiber, any supported configuration will work between vendors.
Unfortunately, you will need the manufacturer-recommended SFP+ modules. Since twinax direct attach cables are passive things, you often end up requiring the same vendor's cards on both ends. The cable itself is just a cable, but an Intel card might not be capable/willing to talk to a Chelsio card over direct-attach.

Thanks...I'll probably take the gamble and buy the intel card and try it with the chelsio.

 

[jgreco]

There's a nice 10G networking primer over in the Networking section that covers lots of this.

 

[rzo]

Hi there,

thanks for your effords to great this great NAS operating system.

I try to setup a new HA-NAS using FreeNAS-9.3-STABLE-201511040813 for research purpose. In our setup, we try to use the X710-da2 Intel Card to connect the NAS System to an Cisco UCS cluster.
As far as I can see, I experience the same issues as posted by the thread opener and as it is mentioned in issue #9117.

After a bit of investigational work, I found, that Intel provides a new driver (29.7.2015) for this network device (see: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/product/83949/Intel-Ethernet-Converged-Network-Adapter-X710-Series).

This driver comes in an uncompiled form. For this reason I have some questions:

- How can I obtain the correct kernel sources to build the driver by hand on my current FreeNAS system?
- How can I install the needed tools (e.g. binutils and gcc) on my FreeNAS since the download mirrors provided in this systems point to an invalid FreeBSD verion.
- Is it possible to integrate this driver "manually" in my system and remove the "old not working" one "by hand"? I just want to test, if this will solve the issues.

Or could someone provide this driver in a "pre-build" format for the latest release (*ko-files)? I would be very thankfull, if I do not have to setup a complicated build process.

Thanks in advance and greetings from Germany,
Richard

 

[jgreco]

You're free to build FreeNAS from source, but this isn't recommended for production use.

https://github.com/freenas/freenas

You're better off getting a supported card. Much less likely to lead to nasty surprises.