Moving to 10gbe

[Waldek]

lolwut? For 100m of armoured 8-core SMF, maybe. For a few metres of OM4, not so much.

Please... You know I meant transceivers too, not just the cables...

The problem with the ES-16-XG is you have to very carefully select what transceivers to buy. Like with the DACs, some work, some do not. The same DAC and/or transceiver can work with a NIC or not. Well, when I say do not work, I do not mean no connectivity at all. You will have 1GBit. You can play the game and find an SFP+ port where you get 10Gbit, but then.. You reboot the switch and gone... Back to 1Gbit.
Again, this is not just my s***ty unit. Many people report exactly the same.

 

[whitey]

My suggestion, work w/ a fs.com rep and ONLY order a single optic (what they recommend for that switch, may even be a generic coded optic) and test w/ a couple of those and a OM4 jumper. Once you have found the magical combo for your setup order the rest.

Bet these would work, generic coded optic pretty much, I'd start here:

Customized 10GBASE-SR SFP+ 850nm 300m DOM Transceiver
1M LC UPC to LC UPC Duplex 2.0mm PVC(OFNR) 10G OM4 Multimode Fiber Optic Patch Cable | FS.COM

@doup93 , try those Arista DAC's I sent ya, if troubles crop up use a single generic/customized optic above for the switch side, that OM4 cable, and one of these below for your X520-DA2 end. I've validated w/ my fs.com rep that this is the best for the Intel side of the house good sir. Out the door $36 for each connection accounting for both ends.

Intel E10GSFPSR 1000BASE-SX and 10GBASE-SR SFP+ Transceiver | FS.COM

 

[Waldek]

This is NOT entirely true really, if it we're I'd be $800 lighter in the pockets over the last week or two as I recently converted to optics/fiber for my 10G connects and each optic cost $16 and OM4 cabling cost $4 each over at fs.com, so for my 4 ports of 10G (accouting for both ends, switch and nic) I ended up paying a lil' over $100 ($16x8 =$128 + $16 for four OM4 cables...$144 out the door...just under 20% of what you are claiming which I'm gonna throw my vote in for inaccurate unless you are just not 'shopping smartly/doing your research' or asking us :-D

You can use DAC's and just stick to the 'known/validated' DAC's for now...nothing wrong w/ that other than it being a PITA but yeah fiber/optics may be most compatible on the US-16-XG currently. It's still a helluva lot of bang for buck when you get the connections sorted out and users on the forums here have reported pretty decent performance even driving IP SAN traffic so I don't think it's a dud...should only get better w/ firmware updates/release as frustrating as it is to wait for them.

2cents

Not questioning the usefulness of optics... I am in EU, so multiply your prices by 2-3, e.g. the single OEM E10GSFPSR costs 30-50 EUR (unless buying from Chinese sellers on ebay, which might be well.. risky and the delivery time is 3-5 weeks often). The point is, I would not have bought the switch if I knew that in order to enjoy the 10G, I also had to spend similar amount of EUROs on the fiber optics. So my feedback regarding the device is really nothing else then just a warning, that if you want to go cheaper (i.e. with DACs) be prepared for a lottery...

 

[saivert]

I don't understand the problem here. You buy a transceiver for the Ubiquity ES-16-XG. I'm sure Ubiquity even sell their own transceivers. Transceivers don't cost much. I certainly didn't pay much for a generic one from fs.com for my Mellanox card. And we are talking multimode with 300m max distance here.
Then it doesn't matter what transceiver you use in the other end because they both speak 10GBASE-SR right?
What goes across the fiber optic cable should be standard. If this isn't the case you would never be able to use standard equipment in the datacenter. Everything would have to be certified and proprietary.

Only DACs are an issue as they have the same transceiver module in both ends and it may not be compaible with either switch or NIC.

edit: I paid $84 USD for (2x) SFP+ 10GBASE-SR modules and 15m multimode cable.

 

[Marry Smith]

Hi all,

I currently have a home lab that consists of one file server, 2 Hyper-V servers and my workstation. All servers are on Server 2012 R2 and moving at some point to Server 2016 and my workstation is running Windows 10 Enterprise.

All these are running gigE using a Netgear GS748T v5 and I'd like to move these to 10 gigE without buying a switch but having a hard time making sense of all the SFP, SFP+, intel adapters, Mellanox adapters, etc, aka complete noob in that department. Current cabling is CAT 6a for all the above.

Any useful links you guys can share where I can learn some of that stuff, how to configure and use them, recommendations, etc would be much appreciated.

Hi Doup,

Lately I have been reading about 10gige interface and possible accessory options you can use with it like SFP and SFP+ cables etc., to make it more effective. I have found two useful resources full of information probably you will find these resources useful as well, here they are:

Small form-factor pluggable transceiver - Wikipedia
FAQ's for SFP+ Cable Assemblies by SIS
Accessories - Emergent Vision Technologies

These resource will definitely remove all of your queries related to cabling options for 10 GigE connections.