HP N36L Microserver - £100

[b0redom]

Thanks for the comments, but no one has answered my question - are my sums right? I'm not expecting much closer to the theoretical max at the moment as Apple, in their infinite wisdom put a NIC in the last gen iMac which doesn't support jumbo frames!

If I am actually getting ~ 300Mbit, that's probably good enough for the time being.

Regards.....

b0redom

[watercooled]

Yes your calculations are correct. But on a side note, the throughput I'm getting is without jumbo frames.

[b0redom]

What drives are you using in your Microserver?
What OS is on your Microserver?
What FS is on your Microserver?
What FS and hardware is your client?

I'm copying from a single drive in my iMac to a ZFS array of WDEARS drives on my FreeNAS 8 based Microserver. I suspect we're comparing apples and oranges.

[watercooled]

Samsung HD203WI 5400rpm 2TB drive.
Debian Squeeze.
Ext3.
I tested with the following: NTFS, and HD322HJ 7200RPM 320GB drive. CPU is AMD Athlon 5050e.

[b0redom]

Ah right, so you're not using any sort of RAID on the Microserver then? I guess that might have something to do with it.

[watercooled]

Possibly, but you'd have to do some benchmarks of the array to be sure. Either way I'd still expect >30MB/s unless you're using something CPU-intensive like online deduplication with ZFS.

[b0redom]

Did anyone find an Intel NIC which will fit in this unit? I presume something like this:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/114417

Would work?

[spoon_]

My days, >£60 for a single NIC is a bit steep...

How about 1000CT for £20?

http://www.crescentelectronics.co.uk...adapter-1.html

[watercooled]

Wow, I'll try and find out the difference but I think you're best going with the desktop CT adapter unless you have some advanced VLAN setup - expect to pay from £20-30 depending where you get it. But I think the built-in NIC is decent enough anyway, it's not Realtek!

Edit: OK after a quick trawl through the specs it seems the PT is actually an older, inferior model compared to the CT. The only reason I could understand someone buying it is if they need that exact card for legacy reasons. Basically, just go with the CT spoon linked, but personally I would buy it elsewhere.

[oolon]

The 82572EI PT is infact 3 years older than the 82574L CT. The PT is a PCIe 1.0a card and the CT is 1.1, the PT takes 2.5w the CT takes .7w there is nothing the PT can do that the CT cannot, its more expensive because its old and might be need in older systems were 1.1 compatibility is a problem.

Edit: ... Hmm watercooled already said the above... Damn!

The 82579 is the new chip, not sure if they have made that one into a card yet, it does not have a dramatic improvement on power consumption (0.66w), unlike the PT->CT change. The main change it that does MACsec IEEE 802.1 AE, which I think most people will be able to live without.

[spoon_]

I love my CT adapters for one reason - you can re-flash the PXE BIOS to iSCSI one and boot from the LUN - all for £20, bloody bargain of you ask me!

@watercooled, the reason I linked to Crescent its purely because of the price, the cheapest around.

[watercooled]

I didn't know that, how do you do it?

[spoon_]

Check here:

http://www.intel.com/network/connect...cts/316975.pdf

Supported NICs:

http://www.intel.com/support/network.../CS-028681.htm

OF thread at their forums:

https://forums.openfiler.com/viewtopic.php?id=1841

[Splash]

Didn't realise you could do this with the desktop adapters - very handy to know.

[Splash]

Hrmm... 28 days passes and no rebate cheque. Have emailed out-bound to see where it is...

[jim]

Did they email you to say it was being processed?