Why is 10 Gb Ethernet still so expensive?

Kei · 13 Jul 2020 at 19:34

This is what I get from 7x 2TB WD SE disks in RAID 5 using an ancient LSI 8888ELP raid controller. Network is solar flare SFN7122 in the server, juniper EX3300 switch and an intel X710 in my desktop running standard 1500 size packets. I do see some odd behaviour as writing to the server is ~7Gb, yet reading from it is 3-4Gb. The other desktop with another X710 barely manages to exceed 2Gbit in either direction. I avoided jumbo frames in order to keep things simple and avoid packet fragmentation.

I went 10Gb primarily to increase available bandwidth to my server so I can copy to it at the same time as someone else whilst I also stream from it at the same time as someone else. Going 10Gb on the other PC's wasn't really necessary but being able to copy to it at 6-7Gb when it's quiet does save on time.

deuse · 14 Jul 2020 at 09:01

Kei said:
This is what I get from 7x 2TB WD SE disks in RAID 5 using an ancient LSI 8888ELP raid controller. Network is solar flare SFN7122 in the server, juniper EX3300 switch and an intel X710 in my desktop running standard 1500 size packets. I do see some odd behaviour as writing to the server is ~7Gb, yet reading from it is 3-4Gb. The other desktop with another X710 barely manages to exceed 2Gbit in either direction. I avoided jumbo frames in order to keep things simple and avoid packet fragmentation.

I went 10Gb primarily to increase available bandwidth to my server so I can copy to it at the same time as someone else whilst I also stream from it at the same time as someone else. Going 10Gb on the other PC's wasn't really necessary but being able to copy to it at 6-7Gb when it's quiet does save on time.

That's great.

I still can't make up my mind which 10gb sfp+ nas to buy

HEADRAT · 14 Jul 2020 at 09:04

So have you made your mind up of whether you're going "off the shelf" such as Synology or QNAP, or self build? (I presume the former)

I have a spare GA-X99-Designare EX just sitting waiting for a job so I think I'm just going to stick a Xeon E5-2650L v4 (14 Core, 28 threads, 65W TDP) in that for some UNRAID fun, I will then probably retire by Gen8 Microserver NAS (Xpenlogy) which seem to go for silly money!!

OK while the Xeon is a few gen's old I can hopefully pick one up cheap, I already have everything else mem/discs/NICs/SFPs so it's really a no brainer, while I love buying new kit it will be more than capable for a NAS with UNRAID.

ChrisD. · 14 Jul 2020 at 09:34

Isn't UNRAID disk speed bound to a single one?

ChrisD. · 14 Jul 2020 at 09:41

@Kei I wish my copy lines were that straight!

HEADRAT · 14 Jul 2020 at 09:46

ChrisD. said:
Isn't UNRAID disk speed bound to a single one?

Not if you use ZFS? (maybe I'm wrong, only just starting to look at UNRAID)

ChrisD. said:
@Kei I wish my copy lines were that straight!

Agreed

deuse · 14 Jul 2020 at 09:59

I like the look of these https://www.qnap.com/en-uk/product/ts-932x/specs/hardware

It can be had for £600.
I don't know if it has the power for transferring my steam game files?

I've spent over £500 on SSD's. This may work out cheaper in the long run?

ChrisD. · 14 Jul 2020 at 10:10

deuse said:
It can be had for £600.

Is that new?

I've moved a lot of workload stuff onto my Mac Mini running ESXi, so all my NAS needs to do is read and write to files. All it has on it now is Plex, NZBGet, Sonarr and Radarr.

deuse · 14 Jul 2020 at 10:20

ChrisD. said:
Is that new?

I've moved a lot of workload stuff onto my Mac Mini running ESXi, so all my NAS needs to do is read and write to files. All it has on it now is Plex, NZBGet, Sonarr and Radarr.

Yes new from the forest.
Well £609

What dual SFP+ card for my PC would you guys recommend?(CHEAP)

HEADRAT · 14 Jul 2020 at 10:52

deuse said:
Yes new from the forest.
Well £609

What dual SFP+ card for my PC would you guys recommend?(CHEAP)

Seems to come with "10 Gigabit Ethernet Port 2 x 10GbE SFP+" or am I reading it wrong (so you just to buy SFPs, so either 10GBASE-SR 850nm or 10GBASE-T SFP+ Copper RJ45)?

ChrisD. · 14 Jul 2020 at 11:05

That QNAP is going to be pretty slow, it's an ARM CPU and not a very powerful one at that. Try and find an i3 model as you can upgrade them to i5 or even an i7.

Caged · 14 Jul 2020 at 11:06

Just don't expect great app performance out of an ARM processor - it will be fine for NAS performance but if you decide you want to run a VPN server or whatever it's going to be pretty terrible.

Edit: Beaten

Quartz · 14 Jul 2020 at 11:51

HEADRAT said:
Or something homebuilt for a lot less money:

CASE

SST-CS381B (https://www.silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=861&area=en) £299.99

That's lovely.

HEADRAT said:
Motherboard

https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/X570M Pro4/index.asp £189.98

I think a better choice would be this board. Okay, it's X470, not X570, but it has IPMI and onboard dual 10 Gb ethernet and auto-splits the x16 slots. Or this Epyc board.

You might also consider this build instead:

deuse · 14 Jul 2020 at 12:02

HEADRAT said:
Seems to come with "10 Gigabit Ethernet Port 2 x 10GbE SFP+" or am I reading it wrong (so you just to buy SFPs, so either 10GBASE-SR 850nm or 10GBASE-T SFP+ Copper RJ45)?

Yes 2 SFP+ ports built in.

ChrisD. said:
That QNAP is going to be pretty slow, it's an ARM CPU and not a very powerful one at that. Try and find an i3 model as you can upgrade them to i5 or even an i7.

Caged said:
Just don't expect great app performance out of an ARM processor - it will be fine for NAS performance but if you decide you want to run a VPN server or whatever it's going to be pretty terrible.

Edit: Beaten

Thank you for the info.
So the Arm chip is rubbish for 10GBe file transfer?

If I went the i3 upgrade path, I would be looking at £2,200 which is a TVS-872XT i5

ChrisD. · 14 Jul 2020 at 12:05

How many bays do you need?

deuse · 14 Jul 2020 at 12:11

ChrisD. said:
How many bays do you need?

I have 8 on my qnap 853a all are full.
So I was thinking that the 5 bays in the 832X would be ok for my Steam games.
And use 2 of the SSD's for cache or what ever...

The money is not the problem. But if the 832X can do file transfer just as good as a £2,000+ nas.
I may as well go the cheaper option.

What's your thoughts?

HEADRAT · 14 Jul 2020 at 12:16

I'm not sure why you'd want to put STEAM games on a NAS, why wouldn't you just put those on local storage?

ChrisD. · 14 Jul 2020 at 12:16

Personally I wouldn't be putting Steam games on a NAS but that's just my preference. You can get some nice NVMe drives for the money you're talking about if it's just extra storage for your PC. Looks at Sabrent, they perform really well and they are priced well.

james.miller · 14 Jul 2020 at 12:21

I have steam games on a nas. Obviously not as fast as a local ssd, but for less IO-Critical games it works perfectly.

deuse · 14 Jul 2020 at 12:22

ChrisD. said:
Personally I wouldn't be putting Steam games on a NAS but that's just my preference. You can get some nice NVMe drives for the money you're talking about if it's just extra storage for your PC. Looks at Sabrent, they perform really well and they are priced well.

I will do some reading about them. Thanks

HEADRAT said:
I'm not sure why you'd want to put STEAM games on a NAS, why wouldn't you just put those on local storage?

I have them on local drives now, and I'm running out of space

And buying a 1tb ssd ant cheap and my motherboard only has 6 sata ports
I have a PCI 2 sata card installed for my P300 3tb hard drives.