[BBLISA] Faster than 1G Ether ... ESX to ZFS

[John Orthoefer]

Between the two is link bonding/etherchannel.   Which is gets expensive in it's self, since you are using multiple switch ports and card slots to increase your link speed.   A quad GigE card is about $500 and uses a PCIe port, then 4 ports on your switch is going to be say 60$/port, so to get 4G out of a machine you are looking at $750.   The card and a 10G port cost about $700 and then a switch with ports you are looking at about $1200/port for a switch to plug it into, so call it $2k/10G. 

In general terms you 3xdollars buys you 10xspeed, without all the side arguments about rated speed and bus rates etc.

My basic though is that in general if 1G isn't enough goto 10G UNLESS you know you'll only need say 2-4G uplink it will save you from revisiting things in a year or two.

You can also look at what you might be able to do to squeeze a bit more performance out of 1G till the 10G comes down more, if the money really is a show stopper.  Look at using Jumbo packets, and using a a P-t-P link (plug a straight though cable into each device without a switch, which BTW you can do with 10G too) for your traffic, make sure nothing but file access are going over your link etc...

johno

On Nov 12, 2010, at 9:21 AM, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:

> Since combining ZFS storage backend, via nfs or iscsi, with ESXi heads, I’m in love.  But for one thing.  The interconnect between the head & storage.
>  
> 1G Ether is so cheap, but not as fast as desired.  10G ether is fast enough, but it’s overkill and why is it so bloody expensive?  Why is there nothing in between?  Is there something in between?  Is there a better option?  I mean … sata is cheap, and it’s 3g or 6g, but it’s not suitable for this purpose.  But the point remains, there isn’t a fundamental limitation that *requires* 10G to be expensive, or *requires* a leap directly from 1G to 10G.  I would very much like to find a solution which is a good fit… to attach ZFS storage to vmware.
>  
> Any suggestions?
>  
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