Supported 10Gb NICs?

[Darren Myers]

I found some mix matched information on what 10Gb adapters are supported in FreeNAS, more specifically FreeNAS 9.3.

So what options do I have?

 

[Mlovelace]

Chelsio and Intel 10gbe NICs are fully supported.

 

[marbus90]

Intel 10GBe NICs are still reported as not perfect by some, even w/ the "fixed" version 9.2.1.8. Waiting on reports for 9.3.

Chelsio is the Go-To-guy.

 

[Ericloewe]

Intel 10GBe NICs are still reported as not perfect by some, even w/ the "fixed" version 9.2.1.8. Waiting on reports for 9.3.

Chelsio is the Go-To-guy.

You sure? Haven't heard any complaints since then.

 

[Darren Myers]

Thanks for the replies everyone! I'm looking into the x520's now, anyone have any experience with them?

 

[cyberjock]

Intel 10GBe NICs are still reported as not perfect by some, even w/ the "fixed" version 9.2.1.8. Waiting on reports for 9.3.

Chelsio is the Go-To-guy.

iXsystems has zero bug reports for outstanding issues, so if people are having problems they should report them. Otherwise they are going to be broken forever....

I'll also mirror what Ericloewe said as I am unaware of any Intel 10GbE issues that are currently outstanding that affect reliability of the cards.

 

[Darren Myers]

Is there a preference between the 2 or are both 100% and recommended? Mainly looking for is one recommended over the other as theres a price difference and while i dont mind paying more i just want to be sure more money = better quality and such

 

[cyberjock]

The Intel is really inexpensive ($100 on ebay if you want to look around) and will give you about 8Gb/sec throughput at peak throughput. It has had problems from time to time with drivers (some of the 9.2.1.x releases just wouldn't work). The Chelsio on the other hand is what is used on TrueNAS boxes. They are like $1000 used (like double that new) and are pretty much guaranteed to work because they are on TrueNAS servers. They give real throughput of about 10Gb and are *the* card to get if you want 100% stability and 100% performance.

Generally home users will be plenty happy with the Intel, but for businesses I'd go with the Chelsio. If you're a business and willing to accept the risk that your 10Gb card might stop working on an update and you may spend many hours troubleshooting the problems, rolling back to the old version, etc then feel free to 'risk it' with the Intel.

 

[Darren Myers]

Is there a spefic model number for the Chelsio cards? I found quite a few on eBay for 100-300$

Edit: I also plan to run on 9.3, I wanted 10Gb because I want to run a 1Tb ssd storage along with my x7 4Tb and x7 2Tb arrays to start.

I figured if I did quad 1Gb nics I could probably saturate them if I wanted too, but I don't think I could saturate a 8-10Gb link

 

[Darren Myers]

I went ahead and ordered a Cheliso T420-CR, so heres hoping thats 100%, worst comes to worst it gets sent back lol

 

[roman mak]

Solarflare runs good for me.

# lspci -vs 03:00.0
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Solarflare Communications SFC9020 [Solarstorm]
Subsystem: Solarflare Communications SFN6122F-R7 SFP+ Server Adapter
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 19
I/O ports at e100
Memory at dd000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable)
Memory at de050000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable)
Expansion ROM at de020000 [disabled]
Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 3
Capabilities: [50] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable+ 64bit+
Capabilities: [70] Express Endpoint, MSI 00
Capabilities: [b0] MSI-X: Enable+ Count=32 Masked-
Capabilities: [d0] Vital Product Data

 

[m4rv1n]

Which model of card 10Gbe work and is not expensive? I want to stay under 150$, 100$ if used. The connection will be direct between a freenas box and esxi server, so I think to buy 2 card and put one in freenas and one in esxi, also I need to buy cable for connection. For performance, I want to reach at least 6Gbit/s .

 

[Ericloewe]

The cheapest reliable ones are the Intels. X520 for SFP+ and X540 for 10GBase-T, IIRC.

 

[Darren Myers]

I purchased one of these and it seems to work great thus far, and the SFPs are cheap (under 40 each)

http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.view&alt=web&id=251754445829

http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.view&alt=web&id=371204336535

 

[Ericloewe]

Chelsio 10Gb NICs for 180 bucks? You sure they're genuine? :D

 

[Darren Myers]

Well it works great, when I first plugged it in and FreeNAS booted it said it had an error, but then it upgraded the firmware on the NIC and bamo it works 100% far as I can tell. I've been running tests since I installed it. Testing being reading/writing data (useless data) back and forth constantly and haven't had an issue

 

[cyberjock]

That's the "last gen" architecture. They're discontinued, but at that price they are probably real. I say probably... but you never know. Generally if you want 10Gb you are a company and you won't buy used, so 10Gb stuff that is used is selling for pretty cheap lately.

If I needed 10Gb, I'd buy them...

 

[depasseg]

I just bought 4 of those T420's from ebay and they installed fine in FN and ESX. Still waiting on a switch to see if they work.

 

[m4rv1n]

Import from USA is too much expensive for me (I'm living in Italy), we have shipping cost but also other tax. Someone tried the Brocade 1020 ? It seems to be compatible for host2host 10GBe connection with brocade active cable and the cost of the card is really cheap. With 240$ i can buy 2 card + 2 cable without switch in the middle between esxi and freenas.

 

[cyberjock]

Honestly, if you can't get a Chelsio, Intel, or a Solarflare (the model is in the forums somewhere) I'd be a bit hesitant to buy it. Last thing you want to do is drop cash on something that doesn't work. Unfortunately if the import taxes are too high to make this feasible you might just have to accept the fact that money = time and deal with 1Gb until things are different.

You could, you know, move to the US. Might be cheaper that way. ;)