Dell R620 NIC Upgrade ?

Because its a server, even its a older one i have to say that in the enterprise there is no 2.5 or 5G.   The 10GbE starts with SFP+ in 2010 or so and later also the BaseT jumps in. In 2018 or so the server introduced 25GbE SFP28 and no BaseT any more.

You will not find a 2.5/5G in todays servers because they are way ahead.

The 2.5/5G is for the Edge and Access switches but not TOR or Core.

Get a 10G NIC for your R620 and a 10G Switch.

Regards,
Joerg

@Origin3k​ 

Thanks, this is for home lab, and because my SSD is limited to 500MBps, the 10G would not give anything more than 4Gbps when it comes to storage, and I don't find it beneficial to spend more on storage as well.

1G is way too slow for the disks so I'm looking for 2.5 or 5G.

Understood. I only will hightlight why there is nothing in the Dell portfolio.  I dont see much risk for getting a PC nic with the specs of your needs and see how its going.  Worst thing what can happens its an UEFI error message and the server would not boot.

Regards,
Joerg

@Origin3k​ 

Thanks, well explained, and very much beneficial.

Just thinking.

If I connect the 10GbE NIC to a 1GbE, I know that if traffic leaves ESXi, with this connection it will traverse the network at 1Gbps.

My question is what about the traffic between VMs, do they traverse at 1Gbps or 10Gbps ?

I know that in a Nested environment the ESXi vmnics show a 1GbE vmnic as 10GbE vmnic.

@huud​ 

The traffic between the VMs, or within the ESXi, is limited to the BUS/CPU of your hardware and depends not on the speed of the pNICs or vNIC. So its possible to go behind the 1GbE if you meassuring with netperf and pushing UDP for example.

A 1GbE vmnic will always shown as a 1GbE. What you mean is the vNIC (aka. VMXNET3) which is a virtual 10GbE. 

pNIC == vmnic != vNIC

Regards,
Joerg

@Origin3k​ 

Thanks, but not sure I understand that. With 1GbE pnics/vmnic the VM transfer data between them at 1Gbps simulating a 1 Gbps connection. And yes I mean the vNICs which appear as 10GbE for Nested ESXi in vCenter but throughput is still 1Gbps because of the underlying hardware.

Would it not be the case that with 10GbE pnics/vmnic they would simulate speeds of a 10Gbps pnic/vmnic becasue of the underlying hardware ?

@huud​ 

because you have ask for VM to VM, which als is called "East<->West" traffic.

1. The phys. NIC doesnt matter and you can remove the vnmic from the Switch or Portgroup and the traffic will flow as long youre in the same subnet and routing isnt needed.
2. The vNIC (for example. E1000, E1000E, VMXNET3) are just virtual code and the value they present are not the limit

From benchmarks 10 years ago

Even the virtual E1000 can push more than 1.0Gbps from one VM to another on the same ESXi(same vSwitch)

As soon as the packets needs to leave the Host than the pNIC == vmnic is the limit together with your switch.

Regards,
Joerg