GigE on ES4x servers

[Balint Cristian]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gary Molenkamp" <gary at sharcnet.ca>
To: <axp-list at redhat.com>
Sent: Wednesday, June 01, 2005 3:52 PM
Subject: GigE on ES4x servers


>
> Hoping someone can point me in the right direction here...
>
> I currently have about 84 ES40's in an existing HPC cluster runniing RH7.2
> that use the DEGPA-SA fiber gigE cards.  Other than the usual issues with
> the acenic driver they work quite well.
>
> I now have the fortune of inheriting another 32 ES40s from another
> department but they do not have any GigE cards (just 10/100).  I could
> probably get 32 more of the DEGPA cards but they are terribly expensive at
> about 200-300 a piece and fiber ports on our switches are not cheap
> either.  Are there any reliable and relatively inexpensive copper based
> GigE cards that work on the ES40s?  (or is this a non-issue?)

    Realtek 8169 chipset based cards are cheap [~20USD], under 2.6 kernel 
work very ok even on alphas [tested personaly]they are even NAPI capable and 
can move as good as an intel class card for e.g. As i know they work even 
with rechentisher 2.4.X kernel well [untested by myself].
    I talked about copper solution, dont see fiber for what is good instead 
of copper if you have no more than 20m cable patches. Really.
    I was able to switch 800Mbit at high pkt/s through realtek without 
problem performing simple routing.
    Dont know other cheaper card, but on fiber there are intel cards even in 
PCI-X form [e1000 driver], very good and reliable, even multiport forms on 
single card solutions are from intel, booth single/multimod
solutions.

>
>
> -- 
> Gary Molenkamp SHARCNET
> Systems Administrator University of Western Ontario
> gary at sharcnet.ca http://www.sharcnet.ca
> (519) 661-2111 x88429 (519) 661-4000
>
> _______________________________________________
> axp-list mailing list
> axp-list at redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/axp-list
>