Hey,
So I've got this board I was planning to use mostly as a router/firewall w/ opnsense
It's fancy enough I could put ESXi on it and run a couple other things, but not much - was thinking a couple VMs that idle most the time, like Unifi controller and VCSA
It only has 1 pcie slot (x16). I've got two NICs I could use:
Mellanox CX-3 40GbE w/ 2 ports
82599 (x520) 10GbE w/ 1 port
I run a storage-only subnet @ 40GbE is 172.16.1.0/24
My LAN subnet @ 10GbE is 192.168.1.0/24
I have 3 hosts in addition to this new router box I'm adding
The storage network is connected directly between 3 current machines in a triangle pattern: 1 - 2, 1 - 3, 2 - 3
The LAN uses a switch with 4 10Gb ports, so I have one open port left
Ideally, I'd like to use the 40GbE dual nic and be connected to both networks, but there's two questions I have about how to do it:
1) VCSA assigns IP per uplink, so would I just attach one 40Gb port to the storage network, and one to the LAN?
2) How would I need to change the wiring pattern to incorporate a 4th host to a directly connected network?
The second question is the one that has me most perplexed. I don't ever intended to get more hosts, so I'd rather not have to buy a switch (plus 40Gb switches are expensive and loud af). But I really have no idea what kind of wiring pattern I could do between 4 hosts without a switch - especially one where one host would only have 1 nic for that network.
Thanks
So I've got this board I was planning to use mostly as a router/firewall w/ opnsense
It's fancy enough I could put ESXi on it and run a couple other things, but not much - was thinking a couple VMs that idle most the time, like Unifi controller and VCSA
It only has 1 pcie slot (x16). I've got two NICs I could use:
Mellanox CX-3 40GbE w/ 2 ports
82599 (x520) 10GbE w/ 1 port
I run a storage-only subnet @ 40GbE is 172.16.1.0/24
My LAN subnet @ 10GbE is 192.168.1.0/24
I have 3 hosts in addition to this new router box I'm adding
The storage network is connected directly between 3 current machines in a triangle pattern: 1 - 2, 1 - 3, 2 - 3
The LAN uses a switch with 4 10Gb ports, so I have one open port left
Ideally, I'd like to use the 40GbE dual nic and be connected to both networks, but there's two questions I have about how to do it:
1) VCSA assigns IP per uplink, so would I just attach one 40Gb port to the storage network, and one to the LAN?
2) How would I need to change the wiring pattern to incorporate a 4th host to a directly connected network?
The second question is the one that has me most perplexed. I don't ever intended to get more hosts, so I'd rather not have to buy a switch (plus 40Gb switches are expensive and loud af). But I really have no idea what kind of wiring pattern I could do between 4 hosts without a switch - especially one where one host would only have 1 nic for that network.
Thanks