Supermicro Server Dual Port Can I Passthrough one?

[martinav]

I have a dual port nic on my Supermicro 7049GP-TRT workstation, with a Supermicro X11DPG-QT motherboard. It has two 10gbe ports on it.

Here's the scenario:

I have a single 10gbe wire to my switch. I need to put two servers in this room, but I do not have a 10gbe switch. I do not want to dumb down to 1gbe with a 1gbe switch. I was wanting to configure one port to passthrough so I can plug a second server into that port, and have them both on the same subnet. I am running FreeNAS on this server. Any way that I can do what I'm proposing?

Thank!

 

[dandanio]

First of all, you can only pass thought per PCI device. So, nope.
Second of all, even if you could, having esxi act as a switch is a no go, since STP.
So... no.

 

[martinav]

@dandanio ,

I know a little about some of this stuff. A couple of things.

1. I'm not sure what STP is.
2. I am running FreeNAS native. I am not using a visualizer.
3. I do have an available Dual Port PCI 10gbe RJ-45 that I can throw in this if I can use these ports as a switch.

I'm pretty sure I know the answer to all of this. But, it really does not seem like a difficult technical expectation. However, the securities or some other detail may not be overcome.

So, with what you are saying, you imply that perhaps there is some way to do this? I'm open to anything. I'm using a 1gbe switch now, but I really want 10gbe speeds. I just cant afford a 10gbe switch to do this. I know there is a rather inexpensive SFP+ 4 port out there (Microtek?) but I dont have SFP+ cards. Again, just more expense than I want right now. I'm open to ideas with the equipment I currently have.

Thanks!

Rod

 

[EasyRhino]

wait, to confirm are you just using plain FreeNAS? because passthrough sounds like PCI passthrough, which is a common virtualization concept.

if you want this other server, that would be daisy chained to your workstation, to be accessible to the rest of the network, then your workstation would need to bridge those two networks together. I'm not an expert on bridging so I wouldn't know how to set it up or what the ramification would be.

If you merely want the server and the workstation to talk to each other, quickly, then you can set them up on a separate subnet with a seprate, manually assigned IP addresses. like 192.168.3.1 instead of 192.168.1.1 That's what I do with a workstation and server next to each other and a direct attach cable between the two of them.

 

[martinav]

@EasyRhino ,

Right, not the PCI passthrough. I'm just talking about nic ports. Completely independent of whats running on the server. The "passthrough" concept I was using is in reference to a "passthrough" port on a switch. Of course I may not be applying that concept correctly either. However, I am running FreeNAS native. No virtualizer. So, I have FreeBSD 12 to work in.

I did attempt a bridge, without result. It was a rather cumbersome process that I was not sure I did correctly to begin with. I am willing to push that further if there was some certainty it would work. It seems like a simple concept. I was just hoping to get 10gbe on both servers on a temporary basis (I have my production server away for repairs). Thus, I dont want to dump money into a 10gbe RJ-45 switch, nor SPF+ NICs, etc. I push big files around, and its nice to have the bandwidth.