Dual Gigabit Nic for Server 2012?

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Ncage

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Dec 6, 2010
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Hi guys, last time i tried to order a server style quad gigabit nic for one of my servers i had bad luck (quad port). I always thought if it was intel branded (well it was a dell nic but manufactured by intel) i would be fine but unfortunately what i got would not work with server 2012.

Anyways now i'm looking for a descent dual port gigabit nic (PCIe 4x) that will work server 2012 R2 (if it works with server 2012 i'm sure it will be fine). I looking for a descent price one on ebay. I'm partial to intel but broadcom will be just fine. Can anyone recommend a model that they know works with server 2012 R2.

Other than can you offer any advice for the future to quickly decide if it will work with the latest windows server OS? I will be looking for another quad port nic soon. Sometimes its hard to tell exactly what intel branded card matches up to an oem branded card and then you have to try search if their are drivers. And if you cant find drivers thats not 100% because of course sometimes the OS will have the drivers.
 
i know first hand these work fine with server 12 and vmware.
 
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tacos4me said:
i know first hand these work fine with server 12 and vmware.
Click to expand...

I actually looked at this card the only thing that worried me was the following amazon comment:
This was installed on a Windows Server 2012 R2 machine. The installation went OK, but it caused a boot agent failure warning during the computer start-up. The computer would eventually boot up, but this was not an ideal condition. Obviously, the driver and firmware were too old.

Thanks to the information provided by another reviewer Blair Fritz, I manually installed the latest Intel driver for i350-T2 (which is listed as incompatible, but you go ahead and do it anyway), and the problem was fixed. But that was a lot of trouble. Had I known Blair's information beforehand, it could have taken less than 15 min. But in reality it took me hours, because I had no idea what was going on in the beginning. From discovering the problem, diagnosing, searching and discovering a solution, to finally fixing the problem, it was a lot of work. To me, it kind of defeated the savings on this cheap card.


Kind of had me remembering when i tried to get the quad card to work :).....tried to force drivers to install.. Any thoughts?
 
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Ncage said:
I actually looked at this card the only thing that worried me was the following amazon comment:
This was installed on a Windows Server 2012 R2 machine. The installation went OK, but it caused a boot agent failure warning during the computer start-up. The computer would eventually boot up, but this was not an ideal condition. Obviously, the driver and firmware were too old.

Thanks to the information provided by another reviewer Blair Fritz, I manually installed the latest Intel driver for i350-T2 (which is listed as incompatible, but you go ahead and do it anyway), and the problem was fixed. But that was a lot of trouble. Had I known Blair's information beforehand, it could have taken less than 15 min. But in reality it took me hours, because I had no idea what was going on in the beginning. From discovering the problem, diagnosing, searching and discovering a solution, to finally fixing the problem, it was a lot of work. To me, it kind of defeated the savings on this cheap card.


Kind of had me remembering when i tried to get the quad card to work :).....tried to force drivers to install.. Any thoughts?
Click to expand...

there's no official support for it. it works, but if it's not worth the headache for you (or you're talking production environment).. just bite the bullet and grab an ET series. newer chipset, officially supported for server 12.
 
I was going to recommend the i350, you can get it in a dual or quad port. Fully supported by intel in 2012r2 and also on HCL for esxi

We use them for our esxi clusters for management ports and also have them in some physical 2012r2 servers
 
I ended up opting for the Intel PT card. It doesn't seem that bad just to install the I350-T4 drivers. If it ends up working out then i will get the quad version of the PT card for my other server. I really don't want to spend $100 on a NIC card.
 
tacos4me said:
there's no official support for it. it works, but if it's not worth the headache for you (or you're talking production environment).. just bite the bullet and grab an ET series. newer chipset, officially supported for server 12.
Click to expand...

Thanks Taco for the recommendation. I received it today and it works perfectly. By default windows server 2012 R2 had drivers for it which is awesome and then i installed the lastest version of intel proset drivers and that worked too :). Now i'm going to get me a quad port version :)
 
Ncage said:
Thanks Taco for the recommendation. I received it today and it works perfectly. By default windows server 2012 R2 had drivers for it which is awesome and then i installed the lastest version of intel proset drivers and that worked too :). Now i'm going to get me a quad port version :)
Click to expand...

Yea, I had 3 of them in production and they worked perfectly on Hyper-V 2012.

Only recently replaced them with dual 10gig broadcoms.
 
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