need 10gbe nic for pc and freenas box, and sfp cable/adaptor for mikrotik

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MESSERCHMIDT

Member
Apr 16, 2015
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hello

looking into what 10gbe network cards i should get for a win10 x64 pro pc and a freenas based xeon box. both systems have free 16x pce 3.0 slots. was thinking of mellanox or Chelsio cards from ebay, but not sure. maybe some intel x520-da1 cards. Suggestions?

i bought the MikroTik CSS326-24G-2S+RM off ebay after reading @ https://www.servethehome.com/mikrotik-css326-24g-2srm-review-cheap-24x-1gbe-2x-10gbe/ for 159$ usd shipped.

I need sfp cables or sftp to cat6 adaptors (transceivers?) for the switch ports and cards. any suggestions on what to get?
 

i386

Well-Known Member
Mar 18, 2016
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That switch has only two sfp+ ports, if you only need 10gbe for the windows and the freenas machine it's okay.

For the windows machine I would recommend mellanox connect-x 2/3 cards: they are cheap, have out of the box driver support in windows 10 and support a bunch of sfp+ cables and transceivers (I'm still trying to find a cable or transceiver that doesn't work :D).
For the freenas machine it's a little bit different. Go for intel or chelsio card here (unless you don't mind to work with the cli and editing config files without a gui to get mellanox cards working). I have no experience with intel or chelsio cards myself, from what I read here they could be picky about dac cables or transceivers.

For cabling you will need sfp+ cables, they can be found cheap on ebay (often used cisco branded) or new on stores like fs.com.
If you need to bridge longer distances (10+ meters) use sfp+ transceivers and multimode fibers.
 

MESSERCHMIDT

Member
Apr 16, 2015
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got the unit today via fedex. i wanted it for the 10gbe connectivity more than anything

ordered some network cards off ebay and some cables. odd because asus and others have 10gbe cards that use rj45
 

herby

Active Member
Aug 18, 2013
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Freenas post 9.10 should play nice with Mellanox. I have a HP branded Connectx-2 serving storage for my VMs over iSCSI and the only instability I had was cured with more RAM. I had entertained getting Chelsio NICs before the Mellanox drivers were added to FreeNAS, but I understand they run hot.
 
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