Quad Port Intel NIC Question

[coolrunnings]

I currently have a dual-port Intel gigabit NIC in my Napp-It All-in-One system. I have passed it through directly to my OpenIndiana VM because ESXi 5.5's networking performance is sucking in my environment. Right now I have 3x HBA's passed through to that VM so I am only able to get one of the 2x ports passed through to the VM or I exceed the 4 device max pass-through limit.

All that said, here's my question: Is there a decent, relatively inexpensive, quad-port Intel gigabit NIC that will present all 4x ports as one device to be passed through to my VM?

I want to do link aggregation as a single gigabit link isn't cutting it for both file-server traffic as well as VM traffic... My 24x disk sub-system can push 900+ Mb/s transfer rates and it's sad to limit it to a single gigabit link.

 

[TCM2]

Go 10Gbps.

 

[SmithyJones]

I heard this about 5.5

Is rolling back to 5.0 or 5.1 an option at all?

 

[MrGreenMan]

there are many quad intel nics on ebay that can be had for $60-$80 if you wait.