10gb and FreeNAS

Hardware Hub Networking
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I have a FreeNAS 9.10 server that’s been running on the standard 1gb adapter for years. In order to improve file transfer speeds, I want to grab a pair of 10gb PCIe adapters, one for my main pc, and one for the NAS server, and I have a couple of questions.

1.Will it require any software or drivers for the server or are most adapter plug and play?
2. If I want to connect other computers in the household to the server, can I do it over regular 1gb while maintaining the 10gb connection with my main system?

Thanks!

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You’ll need to check that the model is supported by freenas/freebsd. Intel cards are typically the most well-supported.

Yep, just use a different subnet.

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Just verify that you’ll actually see a speed improvement - NAS units will inherently have top-end speeds dictated by the the internal storage media and RAID hw / sw. If the unit is already moving the data as fast as it can, the size of the communication pipe will make no difference.

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For TrueNAS 12, check out the FreeBSD 12.2 support hardware list at: FreeBSD 12.2-RELEASE Hardware Notes | The FreeBSD Project

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Should I upgrade from 9.10? It’s not giving me any problems other than my desire for a faster connection.

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I would at least upgrade to the latest 11.

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Freenas 9.10 was eol in 2017… I think for security alone it is time to upgrade to a stable train.

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1.i have almost the latest version and it’s plug and play - although I keep thinking that since people have to make an easy and minor tweak, to do with MTU?

  1. To simplify you could get one of those 4 port 10G and 1 port 1g switches, that’s what I’ve done anyway. They work of PoE if helpful to know .
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I’m with him :+1:

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I’ve done it between my Mint PC, TrueNAS and Proxmox using ebay dual port Mellanox cards and a couple of copper SFP of cables. About 100 quid. I created a network bridge with a static IP, say 192.168.106.10 (106 looks like 10G) and added the two Mellanox ports to it. Did this on Mint, Proxmox and TrueNAS.

I cabled both the PC and the Proxmox into the TrueNAS wnich then acted as the hub.

The speed you get really depends mostly on your drives. I am using four 10,000 rpm Servio SAS drives in Mirror/stripe format with 16GB Optane LOG and 240GB NVME CACHE. This still only peaks at 600MB/s. You’d need to access an NVME directly to get the maximum 1000MB/s.

However it’s still pretty fantastic. My slowest pool with no caching still gets 400MB/s. This feels very fast when moving ISOs and drive images between servers compared to the typical 90MB/s I get over a 1gbps network.

PS, all three systems were perfectly happy with the Mellanox cards, I did not need to get drivers. As NVidia would say, It just works.

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