4 ms·

A good suggestion, but it's a 1U server with both available PCIe slots populated between the external SAS controller and a dual 10gbE CNA. I boot from SATA SSD

A good suggestion, but it's a 1U server with both available PCIe slots populated between the external SAS controller and a dual 10gbE CNA. I boot from SATA SSDs currently. Could upgrade to enterprise SAS SSDs, but haven't noticed a need for my current uses. The boot drive is rarely touched, as most data terminates at the NetApp disk shelves, which have been a far more reliable way to connect unholy amounts of storage to a machine than any of the consumer direct attached storage options I've tried in the past. There's a mix of SSDs and spinning rust in the disk shelves - SSDs for web server stuff and spinning rust for low cost bulk storage.

justinclift 2y ago
> with both available PCIe slots populated between the external SAS controller and a dual 10gbE CNA. Interestingly, there do appear to be PCIe cards that have both external SAS and high speed networking in one: https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/unique-oem-dual-lsi-2308-mellanox-connectx-3-vpi-combo-expansion-cards.30532/ https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/unique-oem... Looks like a bunch of mucking around is needed to get things setup, but seems like it works ok from that point onwards: • https://www.ebay.com/itm/314150370285 https://www.ebay.com/itm/314150370285 Have been considering grabbing one to try in a HP Microserver Gen 8 that runs Proxmox. Not a lot of free time at the moment though. ;)
- timschmidt 2y ago
  Neat! And affordable! Thanks! I will definitely look further into them. I got the 10gbE CNA from another university surplus find where a half dozen were being used as 16gb fibre channel adapters with SFP fibre modules. A little digging revealed that they could be switched to 10gbE CNA mode which is a lot more useful for my purposes. Enterprise gear is full of surprises :D Only potential downside I see is the included pcie switch chip. It's dividing up 8gbps between three devices which could independently consume all of that bandwidth. Probably not a huge issue for my uses, but worth considering if you plan on transferring large amounts of data over network and storage simultaneously.

justinclift 2y ago

> with both available PCIe slots populated between the external SAS controller and a dual 10gbE CNA. Interestingly, there do appear to be PCIe cards that have both external SAS and high speed networking in one: https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/unique-oem-dual-lsi-2308-mellanox-connectx-3-vpi-combo-expansion-cards.30532/ https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/unique-oem... Looks like a bunch of mucking around is needed to get things setup, but seems like it works ok from that point onwards: • https://www.ebay.com/itm/314150370285 https://www.ebay.com/itm/314150370285 Have been considering grabbing one to try in a HP Microserver Gen 8 that runs Proxmox. Not a lot of free time at the moment though. ;)

timschmidt 2y ago
Neat! And affordable! Thanks! I will definitely look further into them. I got the 10gbE CNA from another university surplus find where a half dozen were being used as 16gb fibre channel adapters with SFP fibre modules. A little digging revealed that they could be switched to 10gbE CNA mode which is a lot more useful for my purposes. Enterprise gear is full of surprises :D Only potential downside I see is the included pcie switch chip. It's dividing up 8gbps between three devices which could independently consume all of that bandwidth. Probably not a huge issue for my uses, but worth considering if you plan on transferring large amounts of data over network and storage simultaneously.