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i am into that kind of thing :-) if i wanted to try this kind of stuff at home, i.e. buying any necessary hardware myself, how much do you reckon the whole setu
by hawk_ 6y ago
i am into that kind of thing :-) if i wanted to try this kind of stuff at home, i.e. buying any necessary hardware myself, how much do you reckon the whole setup would cost? any suggestions on used NICs/switches to try this with?
- ncmncm 6y agoUsed Solarflare cards can be had for ~$300. Warning, the fancier features are disabled on cheap cards; you pay Solarflare to upgrade the firmware to get access. The kernel-bypass software and kernel driver (for setup) are usually free to download. A new ExaNIC might be $2000? last I checked. Netronome, maybe $1200? You can get experience with ordinary Intel hardware and AF_XDP or DPDK.
- scott00 6y agoI'll add that you should look for the PLUS skus, ie SFN-8522-PLUS. They come with all the fun stuff. Might also want to look at Packet. They offer bare metal cloud servers by the hour, some of which have Mellanox NICs in them[0]. I'm less familiar with Mellanox than SolarFlare, but I think they have a similar feature set. [0] https://www.packet.com/cloud/servers/c3-small/ https://www.packet.com/cloud/servers/c3-small/
- ncmncm 6y agoThank you, I was not aware of Packet. My employer's customers don't use Mellanox anymore, so I haven't. I don't know why they don't, but would not be surprised if price had something to do with it.
- kd913 6y agoJust FYI, I think it may be a good idea just waiting a little bit as there are currently plans being put in place for a slightly different direction for Onload. I don't think I am allowed to reveal much but it will soon be a lot easier and cheaper/test/try out.