Chelsio T420-SO-CR as a switch?

[DavidVermillion]

Right now, my 10gb network is in a sort of a line. I have a workstation connected to a Mikrotik 2 port switch, and the other port is connected to my ESXI server. I'd like to add a 3rd server into the "line".

I was considering putting a Chelsio T420-SO-CR into my esxi box, and then connecting my 3rd server into the 2nd port on the Chelsio. I read that the Chelsio has an internal switch? Has anyone done anything like this? Is there danger in doing it this way. I'd just really like to avoid a $500+ switch.

 

[Blinky 42]

A lot of the 10G or faster NICs have a sort of switch in there to assist the NFV duties, but the capabilities beyond acceleration of that depends on the card I imagine. The Intel DPDK and Snabb Switch docs would be places to start looking for more details.
You can also look @ experimenting with Snabb Switch and see if it does what you want, but no idea how well it would play along with ESXi.
Snabb is on my todo list along with the Snabb Openstack integration but only so many hours in the day.
For a quick fix, you can just put the 2 ports in the same bridge on Linux and that will pass the traffic as long as you don't have iptables in the way. I have done that before to bridge 10G Cu and SFP+ networks while waiting for a real switch to arrive.

 

[DavidVermillion]

From the website:

T420-SO-CR integrates a high performance packet switch, which allows switching traffic from any of the input ports to any of the output ports (wire-to-wire) and from any of the output ports to any of the input ports (host-to-host).

Does that not mean it can natively act as a level 2 switch between two systems and itself?

 

[Blinky 42]

Quite possible. Would need to find if the drivers for a given OS let you use more advanced functionality than you would get with Linux bridge that happens within the card. There might be some apps to configure it more, or you would need to do something designed to be a full switch like Snabb that will handle it for you.