Brocade 1020 CNA 10GbE PCIe Cards

[Dawson]

So I RTFM for the Brocade 1020. The "1020-1010" ships with Twinax GBICs, the "1020-0010" ships with Fiber GBICs. As usual, QLogic support is trying to scare people away.

Hi, are you saying that there is only 1 Brocade 1020 card, and the 1020-1010 and 1020-0010 versions are just bundled SKU's ?

regards

 

[Psycho_Robotico]

Has anyone been successful with 1G SFPs instead of 10G SFP+? Would be good to know if one could also connect to other equipment that just supports 1G.

 

[nry]

Having a quick scan through the thread it seems a few users have been successful with the Cisco H10GB DAC cables.

I have a bunch of Dell 3M DAC cables, part number 2CM32. Anyone tested these with the Brocade cards? From what I understand these are actually Cisco cables?

Could do with a couple of 10GbE NICs for my new 4 node server

 

[Kristian]

Random note on the riser card... PCIE lanes are all independent and you can cut off the last 8 lanes and it will work fine... Literally grab a dremel and cut them off. Yes you will only have 8 lanes of data but you will still have 8 lanes of data. It is better than it not working.
For a lab server a few years back I cut off 15/16 lanes on a Geforce 6100 to give us higher res support on a ML330g6 and yes, it worked.

I have seen this post in another thread.
Can anyone comment if this would have a chance to work with a brocade 1020, too?
I have a project where I would rather dremel the brocade 1020 then the LSI 9211-8i using a SM-A1SAM 2750.

Any thoughts appreciated.

 

[Kristian_Stracke]

-

 

[Kristian]

So the answer is: YES!

I was able to dremel one of my Brocade 1020 so it fits in a PCI-E 2 x4 slot and its working perfectly

 

[Brady Webb]

I've been able to get the adapter up using the fiberstore sfp+, but I have a fiber jumper running to a netgear gs748tp (cisco gbic, 1gb), and the two won't communicate. Any words of advice?

 

[Patriot]

So the answer is: YES!

I was able to dremel one of my Brocade 1020 so it fits in a PCI-E 2 x4 slot and its working perfectly

I mean obviously you have less bandwidth now... but not surprised it works

 

[namike]

I've been able to get the adapter up using the fiberstore sfp+, but I have a fiber jumper running to a netgear gs748tp (cisco gbic, 1gb), and the two won't communicate. Any words of advice?

You are trying to connect a 10Gb (SFP+) adapter to a 1 Gb switch (SFP). You are going to need a 10Gb switch to connect to, or another 10Gb adapter for a direct connection. A google search does not show the Brocade to be able to use anything but SPF+ optics/DAC at full 10Gb.

 

[Brady Webb]

You are trying to connect a 10Gb (SFP+) adapter to a 1 Gb switch (SFP). You are going to need a 10Gb switch to connect to, or another 10Gb adapter for a direct connection. A google search does not show the Brocade to be able to use anything but SPF+ optics/DAC at full 10Gb.

I had a hunch that was the case. The cards seem to be really finicky in general, hopefully we'll be getting a watchguard m440 in our office soon and I'll be able to test and see if everything works.

 

[Chuckleb]

We ran into that problem trying to get a 1Gb Port off of our Gnodal switch. We ended up buying a switch to uplink to view the SFP+ and cover to 1Gb ports.

 

[Kristian]

I mean obviously you have less bandwidth now... but not surprised it works

Of course. But when researching I learned that 4 Gen 1 PCI-E lanes support aproxematly 1000 MB/s and Gen 2 even 2000 MB/s.
And to be honest as a "prosumer" I haven't been able to saturate a single 10GB link anyways.

A brief test showed 560 MB/s sustained sequential (limited because of the ssds I have got) I didn`t have enaugh time to set up a ram disk and do some more testing yet.

 

[kogen]

You are trying to connect a 10Gb (SFP+) adapter to a 1 Gb switch (SFP). You are going to need a 10Gb switch to connect to, or another 10Gb adapter for a direct connection. A google search does not show the Brocade to be able to use anything but SPF+ optics/DAC at full 10Gb.

From what I understand from that is you can't connect SFP+ 10G to SFP 1G between one another, but does that mean as well that you can't connect 1G sfp on both ends and run at 1G speeds? like using something like this on Brocade 1020: 10/100/1000BASE-T Auto Negotiation SFP Copper-$15

 

[PigLover]

Depends on the switch. Some will support this, some wont.

 

[Brady Webb]

I've got the card installed, SFP+ lamps from fiberstore, and a watchguard m440 I'm trying to connect to. This thing just does not want to recognize the network. I'm trying to use it as a 10gbe NIC but I can't seem to get it up. I have all of the drivers and management software installed. Can anyone lend some direction?

 

[Brady Webb]

That was my own fault.... I changed the VLAN ID and completely spaced on it. Card is up and operating at 10.o Gbps, so I'm happy with them.

 

[mattlach]

Seems like the BR1020's have gone up in price since this was first posted. Cheapest I could find was $185 on ebay now, but I did find br1010's (the single port version) for $39 a piece, so I snapped up two, since I don't need the second port anyway...

If you find the genuine ones expensive the ones I got from Fibrestore work fine for me (thanks to the pointer from someone else in the thread) - they are guaranteed by Fibrestore as well to work - and are US$25 each + shipping.

So, if I pick up these, which cable shoudl I use with them? I have never touched anything fiber before, and this is all a confusing mess to me.

Obviously I'd need an LC to LC cable, with multimode fiber, as that's what the spec says for them, but other than that I am lost...

 

[mervincm]

850nm and om2 will get you going. not much else to it. monoprice has good cheap fiber as well

 

[mattlach]

850nm and om2 will get you going. not much else to it. monoprice has good cheap fiber as well

Thank you.

The transceiver seems to have connections for two fibers, in what they call a duplex arrangement. Do I need both?

The price difference appears minimal. Is there any reason to not just go with OM3?

Thanks again!

 

[mervincm]

Yes to both