Dell Intel X540-T2 10Gb

[tooviral]

Recently picked up a dell r710 with Dual L5640s, 72 gigs ram, 2 140gig 15k SAS, 3 600gig 15k SAS, and was listed as having a total of 16 gigabit Rj45. Turns out there was 2 quad gigabit nics and 2 of these intel x540-t2 dual 10gb nic.

Now my question is, how do I make use of these nics?

Read online I need to use cat6a cables?

I have one box running Xpenology, with 32 TB of Wd reds.

I have a dlink 24 port gigabit switch.

Just purchased a Cisco sg200-18 switch.

The R710 will probably run esxi.

As you can tell I pretty much bought the r710 without a plan, lol.

Any suggestions appreciated.

 

[RTM]

If you want to make use of the NICs, you could move one of the NICs and connect your xpenology box directly to the R710.
Naturally, that assumes the data is actually relevant to whatever will be running on your R710, if not you could replace replace one or both of your switches with something that supports 10gbase-t.

Else, you could probably sell off the x540's if you want to make a quick buck.
Heck, if you wanted you could probably sell the NICs, buy two cheap (and relatively old) single port mellanox connectx-2 cards and a DAC cable. That way you would get 10G ethernet and still have money to spare

 

[T_Minus]

275-300$ for x540-t2 Sometimes can find deals for $250, so you could get a nice chunk for both cards if you don't have a use.