Mellanox ConnectX-4 CX4121C firmware

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John T Davis

Active Member
Nov 19, 2022
152
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Hey, there. I'm back. :)

So, I've picked up a second one of these, and it once more arrived with the same Dell firmware on it--presumably because I got it from the same seller.

I'm getting ready to put it in a Proxmox 9 system, except this time, I'm using a Dell Precision 3660 tower.
So, it's got the Dell firmware and is going in a Dell office workstation, not a server.

I'd like to flash it to the latest NVIDIA/Mellanox firmware to enable full SR-IOV support, but is there some reason it should stay on the Dell firmware? I would assume the OEM firmware is for actual Dell servers, not overamped 12th gen Intel consumer pre-built systems (admittedly, ones using the W680 chipset and ECC RAM). But I've been wrong before. A lot.

What do y'all think?
 
J

jabuzzard

Member
Mar 22, 2021
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John T Davis said:
Before flashing: Make sure you're not flashing the machine via SSH via the Mellanox card. I've done something similar once, so actually unplugged the Mellanox from my switch before proceeding.l
Click to expand...
When flashing firmware or doing any other operation on a computer remotely, especially if it is long-running, which could cause issues if network connectivity is lost, run it in a screen or tmux session. Then, if you do lose connectivity, the operation will continue, and you can recover the situation.
 
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cliffkujala

New Member
May 13, 2024
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2
3
John T Davis said:
Hey, there. I'm back. :)

So, I've picked up a second one of these, and it once more arrived with the same Dell firmware on it--presumably because I got it from the same seller.

I'm getting ready to put it in a Proxmox 9 system, except this time, I'm using a Dell Precision 3660 tower.
So, it's got the Dell firmware and is going in a Dell office workstation, not a server.

I'd like to flash it to the latest NVIDIA/Mellanox firmware to enable full SR-IOV support, but is there some reason it should stay on the Dell firmware? I would assume the OEM firmware is for actual Dell servers, not overamped 12th gen Intel consumer pre-built systems (admittedly, ones using the W680 chipset and ECC RAM). But I've been wrong before. A lot.

What do y'all think?
Click to expand...
Did you end up running this Mellanox 25gb Dual Card in ProxMox 9? I have this https://a.co/d/03vXTSP3 card, and I have to run the ip links in promisc to get it to remain stable. Wondering if vendor firmware would help.
 
J

John T Davis

Active Member
Nov 19, 2022
152
45
28
cliffkujala said:
Did you end up running this Mellanox 25gb Dual Card in ProxMox 9? I have this https://a.co/d/03vXTSP3 card, and I have to run the ip links in promisc to get it to remain stable. Wondering if vendor firmware would help.
Click to expand...
I haven't finished setting it up in PVE 9 yet, but the same card with the Mellanox firmware working great in a TrueNAS SCALE (Debian 13) box.

I absolutely recommend cross-flashing Mellanox cards to use Mellanox firmware if there's something weird on them now. With the Dell firmware in an HP desktop, I was getting really odd behavior off the NIC's status lights, and got the expected behavior when I cross-flashed.

What firmware is yours on now? What does `lspci -nnk` see?

Caveat: I don't know if Promiscuous mode is required for 25 GbE. I've never tried 25 GbE before, but my understanding is that past 10 GbE, sometimes odd settings are needed to make things work.
 
C

cliffkujala

New Member
May 13, 2024
6
2
3
John T Davis said:
I haven't finished setting it up in PVE 9 yet, but the same card with the Mellanox firmware working great in a TrueNAS SCALE (Debian 13) box.

I absolutely recommend cross-flashing Mellanox cards to use Mellanox firmware if there's something weird on them now. With the Dell firmware in an HP desktop, I was getting really odd behavior off the NIC's status lights, and got the expected behavior when I cross-flashed.

What firmware is yours on now? What does `lspci -nnk` see?

Caveat: I don't know if Promiscuous mode is required for 25 GbE. I've never tried 25 GbE before, but my understanding is that past 10 GbE, sometimes odd settings are needed to make things work.
Click to expand...
My card is a slightly different variant than the original topic of this forum thread.

Mine: MCX4121A-ACAT
Forum Base: MCX4121C-...


Code: 
01:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Mellanox Technologies MT27710 Family [ConnectX-4 Lx] [15b3:1015]
        Subsystem: Mellanox Technologies Stand-up ConnectX-4 Lx EN, 25GbE dual-port SFP28, PCIe3.0 x8, MCX4121A-ACAT [15b3:0003]
        Kernel driver in use: mlx5_core
        Kernel modules: mlx5_core
01:00.1 Ethernet controller [0200]: Mellanox Technologies MT27710 Family [ConnectX-4 Lx] [15b3:1015]
        Subsystem: Mellanox Technologies Stand-up ConnectX-4 Lx EN, 25GbE dual-port SFP28, PCIe3.0 x8, MCX4121A-ACAT [15b3:0003]
        Kernel driver in use: mlx5_core
        Kernel modules: mlx5_core
 
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