Fiber Chanel cards?

TType85

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jul 8, 2001
Messages
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I have been seeing a ton of QLogic 4Gb (QLE2462) FC cards on ebay. Is it possible to hook two computer up with these adapters without using a switch?

I'm lookaing at going from a C1100 Dell 1U to a OmniOS/Napp-it file server.

4Gb would be ~400-500MB/s potential vs the 100ish I see over 1Gb and the adapters are cheaper than a 4-port nic.
 
I think these may be for SANs, completely different tech than regular networking. I have a bunch of 2GB cards at home too and a switch. I've dried to ebay the switch several times but it never sells. basically it's worth less than what it would cost me to ship it. :p

I have some SAN enclosures though and with these cards I can hook the enclosures up to the server and they show up as individual drives, which is awesome.
 
Can't help you with the Fiber Channel.

I was maxing out my 1Gb link to my SAN so I upgraded to 10Gb. I am running one of these in my SAN Brocade 1020 Dual Port 10Gb PCI-E FCoE CNA HBA Adapter, along with one in each of my C1100s. Each are direct connect and getting 9.13Gbit/s from esxi to SAN. Total setup was $158
 
These are in fact SAN fiber channel cards. They won't work for network as the SFPs are different from network cards, plusI don't believe there is even any driver support to use them for networking...
 
These are in fact SAN fiber channel cards. They won't work for network as the SFPs are different from network cards, plusI don't believe there is even any driver support to use them for networking...

Damn, hoping for a cheap way out :p

Can't help you with the Fiber Channel.

I was maxing out my 1Gb link to my SAN so I upgraded to 10Gb. I am running one of these in my SAN Brocade 1020 Dual Port 10Gb PCI-E FCoE CNA HBA Adapter, along with one in each of my C1100s. Each are direct connect and getting 9.13Gbit/s from esxi to SAN. Total setup was $158

This is the way I think I will go. Now back to ebay to find some adapters.
 
Can't help you with the Fiber Channel.

I was maxing out my 1Gb link to my SAN so I upgraded to 10Gb. I am running one of these in my SAN Brocade 1020 Dual Port 10Gb PCI-E FCoE CNA HBA Adapter, along with one in each of my C1100s. Each are direct connect and getting 9.13Gbit/s from esxi to SAN. Total setup was $158

What transceiver are you running in them? Most of the cards i'm finding don't have them included.
 
does Napp-it support being an FC target? If so you can put one in your server and one in your desktop and whatever mount points you setup as FC targets will just look like hard drives on your computer
 
What transceiver are you running in them? Most of the cards i'm finding don't have them included.

The cables I am using include them. Brocade 58-1000026-01 Direct Attach SFP+ Copper Twinaxial Cable
 
Opensolaris can use qlogic and emulex 4gb cards in target mode. I am testing oi+nappit as a san host for my esxi cluster at home. Promising results so far. Total cost for cards in the server and 3 hosts was $100. 4 port in the server so no switch necessary even with 3 hosts.
 
Currently using QLE2462 on solaris server with comstar in target mode, Brocade 200e switch, emulex FC card in my workstation and QLE2460 cards on ESXi servers.
Works fine without the switch if I didn't have so many computers hooked to the SAN.
 
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