Recommended cards & hardware (esp. CPUs) for 10GbE box

tiro_uspsss

Hello all!

What is the 'go-to' card for dual port 10GbE Intel cards for pfsense? (SFP please!)

Also, what kind of CPU power is recommended to run two 10GbE cards in a pfsense box?

TIA!

nikkon

in terms of CPU i guess you need i7 or Xeon.
as for SFP
http://store.pfsense.org/Chelsio-T520-SO-CR/

tiro_uspsss

@nikkon:

in terms of CPU i guess you need i7 or Xeon.
as for SFP
http://store.pfsense.org/Chelsio-T520-SO-CR/

is that chelsio card simply an intel X520 chip? :)

nikkon

i suppose…
just download the driver for winsax and take a look in the inf files :))

Keljian

gotta be different:

http://www.chelsio.com/wp-content/uploads/resources/T5-10Gb-BusyPoll-Chelsio-vs-Intel.pdf

http://www.chelsio.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/T5-ASIC-Architecture-WP-012213.pdf

http://www.chelsio.com/wp-content/uploads/resources/T5-Linux-Chelsio-vs-Niantic.pdf

even the t4 looks impressive, admittedly chelsio documents:
http://www.chelsio.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/T4_iSCSI_vs_Intel_Brief.pdf

Guest

Intel Xeon CPUs like the;
Xeon D-1540 little
Xeon E3-12xx v3/v4 small
Xeon E5-26xx v3 medium
Dual Xeon E5-26xx v3 big

As a budget suggestion the Intel Core i7 embedded would be also fine.

At the moment the Chelsio server adapters seems to be best driver supported NICs for pfSense.
Chelsio T520-SO-CR Dual-Port 10 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter SFP+ ~$245
Chelsio T520-CR Dual-Port 10 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter SFP+ ~$799

As a budget and for a higher port density you could also have a look on the HotLava website
they produces Intel based server Multi-port NICs with 1Gb, 10Gb and 40Gb throughput.
HotLava Systems

Keljian

I think you could do it with less, but I am not sure

tiro_uspsss

@BlueKobold:

Chelsio T520-SO-CR Dual-Port 10 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter SFP+ ~$245
Chelsio T520-CR Dual-Port 10 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter SFP+ ~$799

anyone know what the (feature) difference is between these two?

Keljian

@tiro_uspsss:

@BlueKobold:

Chelsio T520-SO-CR Dual-Port 10 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter SFP+ ~$245
Chelsio T520-CR Dual-Port 10 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter SFP+ ~$799

anyone know what the (feature) difference is between these two?

Quick google says the SO-CR is memory free (no memory on board), where the CR isn't . In specific circumstances therefore the CR would perform better.

What is your use case/environment?

Guest

anyone know what the (feature) difference is between these two?

Please open both links and then read about the given features both cards are offering
and then you will find it really fast out by your self! Its only comparing against nothing
magical or mystical. The rest was told by @Keljian to you. As a short example:

full offload of the NAT function (at 10 GBit/s)
full offload of the VLAN part
compared against
full offload of the VLAN part

And now let us imagine that this card should be acting as a WAN Port(s)!
So you will easy find out this would be done by the more expensive card
with ease and the other is not offloading that task from the pfSense firewall.

So there are many features and functions that will be offered by the expensive one
but not by the less expensive one!