Low Power Consumption (ideally around 5-10W at most)
At least 1GB (would like 10G for expandability)
So I found this link here and i found the Fujitsu D2755-A11 for around 30€ which is like half the price of all the other NICs. I would just like to know:
Will there I have a problem with making this card work out of the box? Is there anything I should look for in terms of setting it up?
What equipment (cables, transceivers e.t.c.) will I need to connect it to my Ubiquiti USW-16-PoE if I will be already getting 2x Finisar 10G SFP+ Transceivers FTLX8571D3BCL with my NIC? Would a simple 1G cable & something like this work?
Any other things you want to tell me or advise me not to do, please do.
Then forget SFP+ DAC and transceivers.
10GBase-T limits “good compatibity” to Chelsio T520-BT, Intel X500 (and older) and X710. (Is the E610 supported already? Anyway it won’t come cheap.) T520, X540 and older are rather hot, but may be found for cheap second-hand. X710 is power efficient, but not yet cheap. This leaves X550 in the middle: Not lowest power nor cheapest, but possibly acceptable on both counts.
Aquantia NICs are low power, but driver quality is questionable for server use.
I see. Thanks a lot for your advice. While I was waiting for an answer, I was looking at the whole possibility of me getting an Aggregation Switch to be able to get 10G LAN in the future and I don’t know if this will be done in the near future. So shouldn’t I just settle with something like a Intel i350-T4 quad-port gigabit and then change it if the time comes? Because I am seeing that people don’t really recommend 10GBase-T at all. Any input on that?
I have seen those before posting, that’s why I asked if this has changed because when @etorix talked to me about forgetting SFP+ DAC and transceivers, I thought his recommendations were for 10GBase-T models. Did I understand this the wrong way?
If your switch is copper, go for copper. It is possible to accomodate a few copper links in a SFP+ network; the other way around is not really convenient.
We’ve had very good experiences with anything Intel. We have TrueNAS Scale systems running Intel X520, X710, and E810 cards at 10, 25, and 100 gigabit.
The x520 cards can be had for under $40 on Ebay and around $100 brand new. Specifically the Intel X520-DA2 cards. There’s a ton of them, they had long time driver support, and are very stable.
X710-da2 are also available for little money and consume about 1/2 the power of x520 era NICS. So if the price is similar, snag the 710 based NIC. Either way, be careful to not select a SFP+ model if you want to go with copper 10GbE.
