10gig Lan to connect to Freenas BOX

I have a basic gigabit ethernet network setup with few laptops, workstation and a Freenas server to host all data.

Recently I edit large 3D files with my workstation that are on the Freenas server. I occasionally do some video work too.

I wonder how is it like to setup 10gig LAN? Would it be possible to setup a kind of 10gig ad-hoc connection with the server and my workstation while still keep the usual gigabit connection to others? I have heard 10gig switches are expensive and I can only use 10gig LAN with my workstation as my other machines don’t have the faster interfaces.

I am not very advanced user, although I know my way around basic Linux server and was able to setup Freenas server and shares.

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I direct connect to my Router and my ESXI box with my Intel X540 card. Allows Servers to have their own 10gbe connection and for my other comptuters to share a 10gbe connection to the router. You can absolutely direct connect to it. If you have a 10gbe card make sure it gets good air flow as they do generate a good bit of heat.

Whats your disk set up? It takes a lot of spinning rust to get close to saturating the connection.

As for configuration just put that direct connection on a different network.

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Oh thanks for the advice, I really appreciate it!
At the moment I don’t have any 10gig interfaces, so I would need to buy two cards. What about the cable to run between them? Should it be some kind of crossover cable, or just any Cat 5-7 one?

My disks are setup simple, just two 4TB disks in one pool, so if I have configured them right, it should withstand a single disk loss. I plan to expand this if need arises.

I backup the server to QNAP NAS box via network.

Nics these days auto discover so you dont need to worry about crossover cables anymore in the vast majority of cases.

As for the cable type really depends on the length you are running.

With only 2 disks you might not get that much of a gain out of the network upgrade.

https://forum.level1techs.com/uploads/default/original/3X/6/f/6f03c1f6c70281292e1c8fabf2b103b62563bcd5.png

quick view of disk performance.

You will gain read performance speed thats about it with just 2 drives

Some good resources:

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Thank you for this and for great resources.
After reading that I probably skip the network upgrade for now, plus 10gig cards are not from the cheapest side.

Reading about hot spares, I wonder if my server is setup in best possible way. I run it from USB stick at the moment, have been for few years now. Perhaps internal SSD might be better?

I also think how should I go about it if I need to increase my storage. I got client work pretty much everyday now so I can’t afford downtime.

PS. I also wish I could run the server without video card. The machine is old ThinkStation s30 with 20 gigs of ram. As I never attach display to it, I replaced the video card with old Nvidia card which doesn’t need power connector, but still draws some power I guess, although the tiny fan on it isn’t noisy.

USB stick is fine to be honest, as long as its not trash tier.

Also you can just pull the video card after its configured to no run it and save the power. (shut it down pull card and boot it up)(could be issues with POST on certain boards just an FYI)

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Sadly Thinkstation seems to be one of those, it wont boot without one