Ebay (BIN): Quad port 10Gb Chelsio card: $50 OBO

That's a good deal for that kind of speed. Should work in any FreeNAS, BSD, or Windows server.

Depending on your setup you could even discard needing a 10gbs switch if proximity and port count isn't a problem.

Just curious so I looked it up: https://www.chelsio.com/nic/t4-unified-wire-adapters/t440-cr/

iSCSI isn't a surprise, but FCoE is. Very neat.

EDIT: AND the SFP+ transceivers won't break the bank. Seriously, if I were in the market for adding 10gbs to a host this would be what I would use. But I bet you've got to modify a fan onto it if you're using it in something other than a server with good airflow like it's designed.
 
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But I bet you've got to modify a fan onto it if you're using it in something other than a server with good airflow like it's designed.

Yeah you would want to do that. Even with my mellanox cards that have only a single port, you want to keep them cool. In my server, I have a 120mm fan blowing over the raid card and the mellanox card. In my pc I added an old chipset fan, pretty easy:
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With that copper pin heat sink on the Chelsio, it's going to be a bit more challenging.
 
good night. I guess you could direct in to some NASs/SANs. or what jam a bunch in for a pfsense / LEDE x86 router?

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Documentation for the card "says" you can only use Chelsio SFP+ modules. That's what it says anyhow.
 
Documentation for the card "says" you can only use Chelsio SFP+ modules. That's what it says anyhow.
ok, find a vendor with the Chelsio PID burned into the eeprom. That's what we do with our Cisco gear :D
 
eBay has them for ~$20 or so. Not bad for the speed and density. And your other PC's or switch can use whatever works with them.
 
eBay has them for ~$20 or so. Not bad for the speed and density. And your other PC's or switch can use whatever works with them.

Kindly link to some of those please? Thanks! I found 3M long Twinax cables for $30 which is kind of ouch -- you'd need four, after all.

ok, find a vendor with the Chelsio PID burned into the eeprom. That's what we do with our Cisco gear :D

I am new to this. Are you saying for example this cable could work with that card?
 
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Not necessarily. Just get whatever fiber your SFP+ transceiver uses that you'll be using to plug into this card.
they should be LC connector at the transceiver but depending on the wavelength you buy, that'd determine your multimode vs singlemode jumpers.
 
Kindly link to some of those please? Thanks! I found 3M long Twinax cables for $30 which is kind of ouch -- you'd need four, after all.



I am new to this. Are you saying for example this cable could work with that card?
Not reliably. I havent seen it firsthand, but someone mentioned the card only works with Chelso brand transceivers. My suggestion was to find a generic SFP+ vendor that does custom vendor ID's burned into the eeproms of the transciever to fool the card into thinking it has the proper vendor. Many companies do this in order to keep you buying their stuff (at large margins, of course) but there are ways around it. The downside is that if you have an issue that is directly traceable to the SFP, they won't help you further. That's the gamble you pay; buy more optics and treat them as disposable, or buy vendor products and have support/RMA/warranty. From my profession, we do the third-party option because its so much cheaper (and quicker) to just have spares on-hand. Its one thing to have your PC loose connection on a LAN, but when you're job is to support metro-ethernet and long-haul customers, you tend to stock up on the spares and consider them consumables, especially when time, money, and SLA's count.
 
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