Two NIC's for the average home user - config help

[HoneyBadger]

The 5524 has two 10G ports plus two HDMI ports, which can be used to stack 5524's.

Hot damn, those Dells use HDMI for stacking? That's a nice cheap interconnect cable if I ever heard of one.

 

[jgreco]

How about using 2 switches one gigabit and one net gear 8port 10GB (the one with 10GB-T Base ports) you mention in 10GB primer ? Is there disadvantage to that option ?

If the first switch is gigabit-only, then the link between it and the 10G switch is running at 1Gbps. That limits all clients on the 1G switch to a grand total of 1Gbps access to resources on the 10G switch. This probably isn't what you want.

This is why it's really worth it to not halfass it. You want to bring the higher speed out to the edge switch (the slower one). That's why switches such as the 5524 often refer to the 10G ports as "uplink" ports - they connect a small workgroup into a faster corporate backbone at the higher speed.

So it will do perfect balancing of all 1gb ports requesting data ( as long as they are not more than 10) unlike LACP which will balance sometimes when it decides ?! If I get it right it's sound great ?!?

In practice it'll fill up to 10 gigabits worth of data towards the 1G ports. Don't get obsessed as to how many 1G ports; you are simply not likely to have exactly 10 1G ports all maxxing their links while having no other activity. You're more likely to have 7, 19, or 21 active clients that are each using some fraction of a 1G port. As long as the sum total of that isn't greater than 10G, then the server can potentially be sending all of that simultaneously, without any trouble, it just magically works.

This is the behaviour most people are in need of.

If you're having trouble picturing it, please refer back to what I said about 100Mbps. Think about 20 100Mbps clients and a 1Gbps server. We all know this works. You can have 10 of them all chatting at full speed with the server, or if 20 of them all go at it, each of them gets about 50Mbps (average). You know THAT works, right? There's nothing magic about 10GbE except someone added on a zero.

 

[Black Ninja]

The 5524 has two 10G ports plus two HDMI ports, which can be used to stack 5524's. You would need two 5524's to get four usable 10G ports.

Yes, the whole point of switching ethernet is that things work. It isn't any different than how a 100Mbps client communicates with a server that is connected to a switch at 1Gbps. You don't need to worry much about the details, it's just made to work.

You can theoretically have ten 1G clients talking simultaneously at full speed to a 10G server. In practice it won't be quite that ideal, but reality never is.

I understand. In my case then ( my 1GB switch doesn't have 10GB uplinks only 1GB uplinks) if I get netgear 8ports 10GB-Tbase switch and connect it to my switch , all clients on 1GB switch will suffer bottleneck when trying to get data from 10GB switch (where fast freenas is). So I got to have at least one 1gb switch with few 10GB uplinks, to avoid bottleneck to 1GB clients , right ?

 

[jgreco]

Hot damn, those Dells use HDMI for stacking? That's a nice cheap interconnect cable if I ever heard of one.

Yes. I think I'd be scared to use that in production, although I seem to recall there's some sort of locking mechanism. There were also early reports of failures when stacking using them, though I figure that's likely to be sorted out by now. Note that it probably isn't HDMI, but rather HDMI *cabling*.

 

[Black Ninja]

Does your 1G switch have a 10G uplink?

Unfortenately no. It has 1gb uplinks.

 

[Bidule0hm]

Hot damn, those Dells use HDMI for stacking? That's a nice cheap interconnect cable if I ever heard of one.

Actually I don't know if it's very clever to recycle a widespread connector, or if it's the worst idea I've seen for a while... :D

 

[depasseg]

Unfortenately no. It has 1gb uplinks.

Then get the Netgear, and if you need more than 8 ports, get the Dell 5524 and use the 10G ports to uplink to the Netgear.

Now back to the OP. You can safely use just one connection.

 

[jgreco]

So I got to have at least one 1gb switch with few 10GB uplinks, to avoid bottleneck to 1GB clients , right ?

You can, potentially, also use ... (drum roll) ... LACP. But there we get back into the statistical issues with hashing.

The other problem is that the moment you want to get a 1G switch with 10G uplink, MOST of them (as in I can't think of a counterexample) have SFP+ for the uplink, which means that your 10G switch needs to support SFP+. You can get mixed switches, such as the Dell 8024, or the Dell 8132 with the SFP+ module, but it's probably beyond home user pricing to do so. Therefore I don't see a good way to do this. Home users who want 10G probably need to look at a single switch that already has the ports they need. The 5524 is nice because you can actually scale it with the dorky HDMI thing.

 

[Black Ninja]

If the first switch is gigabit-only, then the link between it and the 10G switch is running at 1Gbps. That limits all clients on the 1G switch to a grand total of 1Gbps access to resources on the 10G switch. This probably isn't what you want.

This is why it's really worth it to not halfass it. You want to bring the higher speed out to the edge switch (the slower one). That's why switches such as the 5524 often refer to the 10G ports as "uplink" ports - they connect a small workgroup into a faster corporate backbone at the higher speed.

I understand completely. I must start with 1gb switch with 10gb uplinks. I can use 10GB uplinks to connect freenas and workstation and all rest 1gb clients will not have 1gb limit when accesing the 10gb nas , and in a future if I need more 10gb ports I can add 10gb only switch to the uplinks and then 1gb client will no suffer 1gb bottle neck between switches , right ?

 

[pirateghost]

I understand completely. I must start with 1gb switch with 10gb uplinks. I can use 10GB uplinks to connect freenas and workstation and all rest 1gb clients will not have 1gb limit when accesing the 10gb nas , and in a future if I need more 10gb ports I can add 10gb only switch to the uplinks and then 1gb client will no suffer 1gb bottle neck between switches , right ?

I have to question how many clients you really have that you seem to think you will have a bandwidth issue....

 

[Black Ninja]

Then get the Netgear, and if you need more than 8 ports, get the Dell 5524 and use the 10G ports to uplink to the Netgear.

Now back to the OP. You can safely use just one connection. :)

Perhaps get the dell first , because if I get the netgear first and connect to my existing switch all 1gb clients will sufler bottleneck when accessing 10GB switch. If I get he dell first and not use more that 2 10gb devices no bottle nech to 1gb ports to 10gb because it's on the same switch , right ?

 

[HoneyBadger]

Yes. I think I'd be scared to use that in production, although I seem to recall there's some sort of locking mechanism. There were also early reports of failures when stacking using them, though I figure that's likely to be sorted out by now. Note that it probably isn't HDMI, but rather HDMI *cabling*.

Most likely the cabling. HDMI 1.3 compliant cables would be required in order to get the bandwidth needed, and even then that's only just a hair over 10Gbps. Locking wise I think there's an offshoot of the spec that calls for a single retention screw above the connector, so that would solve that particular issue.

 

[jgreco]

I understand completely. I must start with 1gb switch with 10gb uplinks. I can use 10GB uplinks to connect freenas and workstation and all rest 1gb clients will not have 1gb limit when accesing the 10gb nas , and in a future if I need more 10gb ports I can add 10gb only switch to the uplinks and then 1gb client will no suffer 1gb bottle neck between switches , right ?

More or less. It's still possible to have bottlenecks, of course. For example, if you have a 48 port gig switch, it is actually fairly easy to slag out a 10G uplink. However, with four of them, it is nearly impossible. What really matters, though, is what the clients are trying to do that might eat bandwidth.

Perhaps get the dell first , because if I get the netgear first and connect to my existing switch all 1gb clients will sufler bottleneck when accessing 10GB switch. If I get he dell first and not use more that 2 10gb devices no bottle nech to 1gb ports to 10gb because it's on the same switch , right ?

Well, you do have 24 1G ports on the switch, so you could potentially have up to 24G of traffic demand from those ports. The question, though, is still, do you have clients that would actually cause such load? Most sites do not.

What we do around here is we build the extra capacity but we call it LACP redundancy to cope with failures. The additional capacity is just a nice bonus.

 

[Black Ninja]

You can, potentially, also use ... (drum roll) ... LACP. But there we get back into the statistical issues with hashing.

The other problem is that the moment you want to get a 1G switch with 10G uplink, MOST of them (as in I can't think of a counterexample) have SFP+ for the uplink, which means that your 10G switch needs to support SFP+. You can get mixed switches, such as the Dell 8024, or the Dell 8132 with the SFP+ module, but it's probably beyond home user pricing to do so. Therefore I don't see a good way to do this. Home users who want 10G probably need to look at a single switch that already has the ports they need. The 5524 is nice because you can actually scale it with the dorky HDMI thing.

What if I get 5524 and then add XS708E (8 port 10GB -Tbase) who has 1 SPF+ port I assume is uplink ?

 

[Black Ninja]

I have to question how many clients you really have that you seem to think you will have a bandwidth issue....

Around 15 clients, but with 1GB uplink it's enought just 1 client to start copy file from the 10gb nas and all the rest 1gb clienats will be jammed when acesing the nas

 

[Black Ninja]

More or less. It's still possible to have bottlenecks, of course. For example, if you have a 48 port gig switch, it is actually fairly easy to slag out a 10G uplink. However, with four of them, it is nearly impossible. What really matters, though, is what the clients are trying to do that might eat bandwidth.



Well, you do have 24 1G ports on the switch, so you could potentially have up to 24G of traffic demand from those ports. The question, though, is still, do you have clients that would actually cause such load? Most sites do not.

What we do around here is we build the extra capacity but we call it LACP redundancy to cope with failures. The additional capacity is just a nice bonus.

I only need to make sure that 3-4 clients(1gb) can copy files from Freenas with 10gb connection at the same time, which 10GB uplink will be plenty , but 1GB uplink will clog the pipe as soon as 1 client (1gb) starts copying files from 10gb nas.

Can I get 5524 and later get XS708E (8 port 10GB -Tbase) and connect them together ? Netgear shows 1 SPF+ port called shared I assume it's uplink ?

 

[depasseg]

Get the Netgear. Connect as many devices that need fast access to it (both 10G and 1G devices). Connect the Netgear to your existing switch with Cat5e/6 (it's only a 1G solution, but should be fine). If you need more 1G ports down the road, get the 5524 and an SFP+ for the Netgear to do uplink. If you need more 10G ports down the road, get another Netgear and connect them with Cat6.

 

[pirateghost]

Around 15 clients, but with 1GB uplink it's enought just 1 client to start copy file from the 10gb nas and all the rest 1gb clienats will be jammed when acesing the nas

how large are these files?

how much traffic do these clients ACTUALLY utilize?

 

[depasseg]

I only need to make sure that 3-4 clients(1gb) can copy files from Freenas with 10gb connection at the same time, which 10GB uplink will be plenty , but 1GB uplink will clog the pipe as soon as 1 client (1gb) starts copying files from 10gb nas.

Can I get 5524 and later get XS708E (8 port 10GB -Tbase) and connect them together ? Netgear shows 1 SPF+ port called shared I assume it's uplink ?

Yes, they can connect. You will need the SFP+ for the Netgear and a fiber to connect it to the Dell. And there really isn't anything that makes the port a special "uplink" port. It's just what folks tend to use them for.

 

[Black Ninja]

how large are these files?

how much traffic do these clients ACTUALLY utilize?

Large 4-5GB per file , and then transfer of 120-180GB sequential. 3-4 clients are like that because , backup, media, etc. the rest arenot sequential but with 1gb uplink it too much bottle neck, 1 client it's enough to clog the rest