Chelsio T420-CR modules
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I have these currently in use, I'm using Cisco twinax direct copper SFP+ modules+cable, all works a treat. Though SRIOV doesn't work for virtualisation in Hyper-V Windows 2019 host and neither does VMQ. For NAS they are all good, but for virtualisation on latest Windows hosts, do not touch with a bargepole, plus Chelsio no longer release driver updates for these cards so they are stuck at a prehistoric NDIS level.
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Thank you Chelsio for NOT supporting the HomeLab crowds who are the ones who tend to buy your older gear and hold up your flag to new businesses, well, they probably would if you at least cared about older generation cards with modern drivers for them to tinker with... probably should have gone with Mellanox, at least they do care about the homelab crowd.
[/sarcasm mode off]
[sarcasm mode on]
Thank you Chelsio for NOT supporting the HomeLab crowds who are the ones who tend to buy your older gear and hold up your flag to new businesses, well, they probably would if you at least cared about older generation cards with modern drivers for them to tinker with... probably should have gone with Mellanox, at least they do care about the homelab crowd.
[/sarcasm mode off]
Have the T-440-CR and T-422-CR and can confirm they work both mellanox and netgear 10gtek modules and dacs.
The T4 series are pretty good for FreeBSD based OS (freenas, pfsense) but are not supported in windows 10 or esxi 6.5/6.7. T5 series is buy prices on those are a bit prohibitive.
The solarflare adapters, on the other hand, are well supported and could be had for $18: Solarflare SFN6122F Dual-Port 10GbE PCI-E High Profile Server Adapter Card 816191010151 | eBay
The solarflare adapters also officially support arista dacs, which can be had for cheap as well: Lot of 4 Arista CAB-SFP-SFP-1M 1M Passive Copper Cable | eBay
The T4 series are pretty good for FreeBSD based OS (freenas, pfsense) but are not supported in windows 10 or esxi 6.5/6.7. T5 series is buy prices on those are a bit prohibitive.
The solarflare adapters, on the other hand, are well supported and could be had for $18: Solarflare SFN6122F Dual-Port 10GbE PCI-E High Profile Server Adapter Card 816191010151 | eBay
The solarflare adapters also officially support arista dacs, which can be had for cheap as well: Lot of 4 Arista CAB-SFP-SFP-1M 1M Passive Copper Cable | eBay
T5 would be the way to go or even T6, but as you said it, the prices are as of yet a little extreme for homelab tinkering.
On a side note, I have been able to just keep the T4 in place for RDMA, effectively you just give it another IP address in the same subnet and windows somehow does all its magic behind the scene. So I rely on an Intel nic currently for SR-IOV and VMQ. Just would have been a little nicer if all of it just worked on T4... which it apparently 'can'... but the lack-of driver-support for an end-of-line product is the showstopper. One can't really blame the manufacturer for not supporting older products, but all it would be is a driver update as there isn't really that much of a difference between T4 & T5 subjectively speaking.
On a side note, I have been able to just keep the T4 in place for RDMA, effectively you just give it another IP address in the same subnet and windows somehow does all its magic behind the scene. So I rely on an Intel nic currently for SR-IOV and VMQ. Just would have been a little nicer if all of it just worked on T4... which it apparently 'can'... but the lack-of driver-support for an end-of-line product is the showstopper. One can't really blame the manufacturer for not supporting older products, but all it would be is a driver update as there isn't really that much of a difference between T4 & T5 subjectively speaking.