Recommended / supported 10G Ethernet card

[Amin Samir]

Hello,

I am new to freenas, i need to know what is recommended / supported 10G Ethernet card to install in free nas, we will be installing 9.2.1.8 the latest version.

Thanks in advance.

 

[L]

Freenas is built on top of freebsd. You need to check the freebsd hardware compat list

https://www.freebsd.org/releases/9.2R/hardware.html#support

 

[mjws00]

Search for the chelsio card ixsystems actually uses. There are issues.

https://bugs.freenas.org/issues/4560

 

[cyberjock]

Yeah, don't just grab a card from that list Linda linked to. They are "supposed" to work, but some don't. The Chelsio card is the only one I'd recommend in a production enviroment at the present time.

 

[Mlovelace]

I am currently running a Chelsio T520-CR on 9.2.1.8 and have no issues with this card. I tried my Intel X520-DA2 and had the same issues that are listed in the linked bug report. The T4 and T5 Chelsio ASIC are fully supported in the current version of Freenas.

 

[vikingboy]

X520 appears to be working fine under 9.2.1.7 and is a solid card generally. i haven't upgraded to .8 yet but don't expect any fun and games. Chelsio is the official card of choice, they've been less troublesome historically it seems.

 

[cyberjock]

My x520 has worked fine, with one exception. Under heavy load for several hours straight it seems to die. As I don't normally use the server in that regard it has "worked" for me. But if a friend brought over his server and wanted a copy of my mom's "home videos" I would expect the X520 to fail once or twice. Eh, maybe three times because there's so many...

If you plan to do this in production, the X520 is currently a bad choice because there's always the risk of it "just dying" and the only fix is a reboot.

 

[Amin Samir]

Thanks guys for your support, really appreciate it,
Amin

 

[vikingboy]

Interesting Cyberjock. Was that under the recent builds too wight he latest driver included? I've just transferred around 15TB to my server over a pair of x520s with SFP+ optical cables without issue, the x520 is working perfectly for me right now.
I have heard of some incompatibilities between cards and SFP+ modules which can cause lockups or possibly you are just overflowing a buffer somewhere and crashing the driver?
I know its not a perfectly representative test but I'm iperf stable over 24hours (I did this to verify the card temps were under control rather than the network was stable).
Certainly if you have to go and buy cards today for FreeNAS then Chelsio seems like the safe move. I had a bunch of x520s lying around otherwise Id have gone Chelsio too.
PS: Not an apples to apples comparison but I've used x520's in a pfSense BSD box too without issue, stable over 30days+ uptime.

 

[cyberjock]

Was what under recent builds?

The exact problem with X520 isn't well understood by the FreeBSD community. We've had people not have a problem for days, then twice in an hour.

I bought the X520 about 8 months ago or so and did it because they were cheap ($100 per card). The bottom line is that, for right now, the X520 is not a "highly recommended" card because it can drop out at any time. In a production environment, this is nothing short of unacceptable. For home use, if you are okay with rebooting if/when it happens then sure, go for it.

 

[vikingboy]

Im too new to the whole FreeNAS gig to offer any solutions so my advice to the OP is go with the herd and buy Chelsio - save yourself the headaches! :)

@cyberjock - do you think we can and should try to help the community understand this specific topic better and in turn, help the dev's help us by fixing some of these issues? Its not like Intel is a marginal player in this space. This may sound like a douche comment but I think its worth asking. Intel x520's retail at $400+, even second hand they are very rarely (never?) below $200 - either you got a great bargain or you may have inadvertently bought one of the Chinese x520 copies, I have heard of issues with those being random in performance and stability so wanted to check we were using official Intel boards?

 

[cyberjock]

Intel is aware of the issue, they just haven't provided a patch. And there's no way we're going to get a working patch without understanding the design of the NIC (or random chance). If you go to the FreeBSD forums this is well known. Nobody has the answer though.

Mine is definitely authentic. This isn't a one off thing. This is *very* well documented and has multiple tickets in our ticket system on the issue. ;)