10Gbps home network, on the cheap. Sort of.

Thanks. I'm find Mellanox MHEA28-XT cards on ebay, what is the difference between that and the Mellanox MHEA28-XTC cards?

Also could you run a Ubuntu environment on your server in a VM and still get the same speeds? I'm thinking of installing Windows Hyper-V Server 2012 and put Windows Server Essentials 2012 and a variation of Linux (to run the SAN) ontop.
 
Last edited:
The XT is a mem-free card so uses system memory. The XTC cards have onboard memory but they are generally more expensive unless you get lucky. No idea which would perform better.

Couldn't tell you anything about running in a VM. I'm just going to run a simple WHS system. Don't want to make it any more complicated.

BTW - I ran FTP tests. Read and write were both running at approx 250MB/s. Still waiting for a new system to arrive so I can use my HP P410 raid card as well. Real shame the HP microserver doesn't have two 8x PCIE slots.
 
The prices of the fibre optic cables are the deal breaker. £170 is a lot of money.
Over short distances though, I can see that this might be viable.
Does each PC need to be equipped with the Mellanox InfiniHost III MHEA28-XT dual port 10Gbps card? If so, this won't work with laptops...correct?
 
BeelzebubUK said:
The XT is a mem-free card so uses system memory. The XTC cards have onboard memory but they are generally more expensive unless you get lucky. No idea which would perform better.
Click to expand...

Nope. The C denotes that the card is RoHS-R5 compliant. There is no other difference between MHEA28-XT and MHEA28-XTC. The EA28-XT cards run at SDR (10Gbps) and the GA28-XT cards run at DDR (20Gbps).

This list has some information on the different HCAs Mellanox have produced.

With regards to the VM question, your best bet is to use ESXi on a platform that supports Directed I/O (Intel) or IOMMU (AMD) and use pass through to give the VM direct access to the adapter. Although most modern CPUs support this there are unfortunately quite a limited number of consumer motherboards that have the feature enabled. I've tested it on my ASUS Crosshair IV Formula and it works ok.

sunama - yes you'll need an InfiniBand adapter in each client, such as the MHEA28-XT.
 
Shad said:
Nope. The C denotes that the card is RoHS-R5 compliant. There is no other difference between MHEA28-XT and MHEA28-XTC. The EA28-XT cards run at SDR (10Gbps) and the GA28-XT cards run at DDR (20Gbps).

This list has some information on the different HCAs Mellanox have produced.
Click to expand...

Ahh my bad - none of the descriptions I read for the XTC mentioned mem-free so assumed they had onboard. Thanks.
 
sunama said:
The prices of the fibre optic cables are the deal breaker. £170 is a lot of money.
Over short distances though, I can see that this might be viable.
Click to expand...

CCL sell a StarTech 50/125 Multimode Fiber Cable LC - LC for £23.52, it that the correct cable?
 
Last edited:
Not for the cards I've used - you need CX4 connectors, passive for copper and active for fibre. Those StarTech cables are for SFP/QSFP modules used on the newer IB cards and 10G networking gear, AFAIK.
 
Ah.. thats kinda scuppered my plans. The cheapest 30m cable I can find is $600! The 15m cables are $175 but thats cutting it very fine!
 
Last edited:
That's the right type of cable - but about twice as long as I'd consider with copper. Even 15m is a push from what I've heard. This is quite an interesting read.
 
So could i get the one you use then as I'm getting the same fibre card? How one Earth do you tell the difference between the fibre and copper ones as the listings dont really help? Is this one fibre (190626588414 seller pudintime)?
 
Hi this seems the closest to your cable (item number 200827162799). It is a Zarlink ZLynx 30M CX4-CX4 Quad Infiniband fibre optic cable ZL60610. Am I right?
 
But...why? Why do you need to be able to read/write to your NAS at 500MB/s ? What's wrong with gigabit for a fraction of the cost? Is this just for the fun of it? If so cool. :)
 
jaybee said:
Is this just for the fun of it? If so cool. :)
Click to expand...

For me? Yes, largely. But I also want some storage I can put video material on and use as scratch during editing. I could use a couple of SSDs in my workstation but... this approach appeals to my inner geek :p

I've finished rebuilding one of my servers into an ESXi host so I can run an Ubuntu VM with the Mellanox adapter passed through, with the aim of setting up an SRP target. Just need some storage behind it and I'll be away, but should have another ram disk benchy up soon...
 
The problem I have with this system is the excessive cost.
Gigabit speeds can achieve around 110MB/s. This is plenty for most HDs and SSDs. Costs are relatively low (I bought a gigabit router for £32).

So, to increase the speeds (over gigabit), you need to fork out £100s...which is a lot.
It might be better to store the items locally in your PC, using multiple SSDs.

Of course, if you have the money...then this is not a problem.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom