TL;DR: In answer to my original question: Yes! This gear will do 10 gigabits!
I've replaced the elderly Dell 2816 switch in my lab with a
Dell PowerConnect 5524P unit purchased on eBay. I installed
Intel X520-DA1 NICs (also purchased on eBay) in my primary and secondary All-in-One (AIO) servers and connected them to the 5524's two 10G SFP+ ports using 'custom made'
TwinAx cables from The Fiberstore (
www.fs.com). By 'custom made', I mean that I added a note to my order indicating I would be connecting X520-DA1 cards to a Dell 5524, and the good folks at the Fiber Store made up cables with Intel- and Dell-compatible transceivers on either end - at no upcharge!
Ten Gigabit Goodness Ensued! :)
Well, not quite ten... I get a maximum transfer rate of ~8.2 Gbit/s on the primary server (an X10SL7-F), but only ~3.7 Gbit/s on the secondary (an X8SIE-4LNF). The primary server's results are well within what I'd been led to expect by the experiences of others, but I'm a little surprised at the secondary server's poor showing. In its defense, it
is an older machine. I've tried tweaking PCI-related BIOS settings and using an alternative ESXi NIC driver, so far to no avail: 3.7Gbit/s seems to be the limit for this box. But I welcome suggestions from the experts here on the forum for improving its performance and proving me wrong about this.
Both AIO servers run VMware ESXi 6.0U3 with FreeNAS 9.10.2-U1 installed as a VM (see 'my systems' below for details).
I tested transfer rates by running iperf in server mode on the appropriate FreeNAS instance, and connecting to it from four client iperf instances running on a pair of desktops, a laptop, and the FreeNAS VM on the other AIO server. See the screenshots below for results.
Overall I'm quite happy with this setup. I'm getting the desired performance where it counts, on my primary AIO server, and the secondary server, while not quite as fast as hoped, nevertheless has gained a four- or five-fold increase in transfer rates vs plain old gigabit Ethernet. And I'm especially pleased with the relatively low cost!
Other notes:
The Dell 5524P is loud! I expected it to be, because it's a PoE switch. It has a beefier 600W power supply containing two integral 40x40x28mm fans - Delta FFB0412SHN units rated at 54.5 dBA, the kind of 'screamers' we've all seen in 1U gear - plus two additional chassis fans which are temperature-controlled and never seem to come on. I've ordered a pair of Sunon GM1204PQV1-8A fans rated at 36.5 dBA to replace the screamers. This gear is all located in my shop, so I don't mind things being a
little noisy, but not screaming Banshee levels of noisy!
I purchased my 5524P for $195. The same seller has since raised the price to $215... better get 'em while they're hot! But if you're willing to forego PoE support, you can still get the common, garden variety 5500-series switches for under $200.
Transfer rates, primary FreeNAS server:
View attachment 16287
Transfer rates, secondary FreeNAS server:
View attachment 16288