10 GB Ethernet, or adapter teaming?

[Pradeep]

So our new server at work is humming along, takes all we can throw at it. However, as we add more connections to it, I can see that we are going to max out the gigabit ethernet connection (there's 2 on board, one goes to the lab for all the work, the other to the rest of the offices).

I see that there are some cheaper switches now coming into the market, with one or two 10Gbit Ethernet ports, and 48 gbit ports. Is anyone tinkering with 10GB ethernet? Looks like fiber for anything over 15m.

Or would it be easier/more efficient to get say an additional Intel server NIC, and aggregate a few physical links to one of the existing Dell Gbit switches (which I believe support the .ab spec required).

TIA, Pradeep

 

[P5-133XL]

You need to consider the BW of the busses and slots on your server to figure out how many Gb cards your server can deal with. A single Gb card can max-out the usable BW of a standard PCI bus. That means for multiple Gb cards you need to be using PCI-X slots. A single 133MHz PCI-x (1.0b) bus can theoretically handle about 8 single gigabit ports while a PCI-X 266 (2.0) can deal with 16 and PCI-X 533 (2.0) could deal with an enormouse 32 ports. If you've got two free slots that means two quad Gb Ethernet cards are possible on a 133MHz bus or a single 10Gb card. You can do the math, knowing the number and types of busses and the number of slots that can be used. At that point you are just comparing costs of the two options with cost/reliability/redundancy going towards the aggregrated cards while simplicity goes to the 10Gb card.

 

[Mercutio]

Pradeep, are you talking about GBoC or actual fibre Gbit of some kind?

 

[CougTek]

So our new server at work is humming along, takes all we can throw at it.

What did you finally do to solve your networking / RAID controller transfer capping problem?

 

[Pradeep]

Pradeep, are you talking about GBoC or actual fibre Gbit of some kind?

Gbit over copper.

Sounds like aggregation is the way to go, there's plenty of PCI Express slots free, so bandwidth in the server is not a problem.

 

[Pradeep]

So our new server at work is humming along, takes all we can throw at it.

What did you finally do to solve your networking / RAID controller transfer capping problem?

Ran Cat 6 all over the place

 

[CougTek]

You were limited to 30MB/s last time. How much do you get now? I figure that "enough" will be your answer.

So you didn't have to refund your company for the cost of the new server? Good.

 

[Pradeep]

You were limited to 30MB/s last time. How much do you get now? I figure that "enough" will be your answer.

So you didn't have to refund your company for the cost of the new server? Good.

Still about 30MB/sec. But I attribute that to the speed of the single drive in the client machines.

The problem I will be encountering is when I have 6-8 connections to the server, all wanting data. In which case a single 125MB/sec (theoretical) gigabit connection will be insufficient.

No refunds required