I have an XCP-ng virtualization cluster built out of these tiny office PCs running i5-7500T:
Issue is, they only have one NIC port, and I’m using NFS for VM storage, and it causes issues if one VM is doing a lot of network intensive tasks or a VM backups are occurring and VMs lock up or fire off I/O errors due of lack of bandwidth and saturating the link.
They have only one M.2 port and I’m using that for the boot drives, as I don’t have the SATA drive brackets. An M.2 NIC can’t be used due to lack of space for the cables.
As they have USB 3.0, is using USB NICs a good idea? And if so, which one should I go for?
They need to be supported with XCP-ng.
Did you ever find a good solution? I am also looking for a USB nic for a mini PC cluster for xcp-ng.
I unfortunately did not, but I have some pointers from when I was doing my research:
- You need to find a USB NIC with a chip that’s natively mainstreamed into/supported by Linux Kernel 4.19
- Most USB NICs tend to die due to heat, metal enclosures are best bet
- Most modern USB dongles use the AX88179A USB 3.2 Gen1 to Gigabit Ethernet chip - too modern and won’t work
Need to retract the statement regarding the AX88179A chipset, XCP-ng recently updated the Linux kernel version and it should work with it. Doing a risky step in the name of science and buying 4 of them to test and going to see if it’ll work
My XCP-ng install contains the drivers, maybe it’ll work?
[22:00 STK-PROD-XCPVIRT04 ~]# modinfo ax88179_178a
filename: /lib/modules/4.19.0+1/kernel/drivers/net/usb/ax88179_178a.ko
license: GPL
description: ASIX AX88179/178A based USB 3.0/2.0 Gigabit Ethernet Devices
srcversion: 939AC35FBA15593ACF0DEC3
alias: usb:v050Dp0128d*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in*
alias: usb:v17EFp304Bd*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in*
alias: usb:v04E8pA100d*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in*
alias: usb:v0DF6p0072d*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in*
alias: usb:v2001p4A00d*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in*
alias: usb:v04B4p3610d*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in*
alias: usb:v0B95p178Ad*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in*
alias: usb:v0B95p1790d*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in*
depends: usbnet,mii
retpoline: Y
intree: Y
name: ax88179_178a
vermagic: 4.19.0+1 SMP mod_unload modversions
Cooling might be an issue as these things get hot.
Did you get it to work? I bought one and can’t get it to work on Ubuntu 22.04 (6.5 kernel). I found this video that I will have to try. He’s using 3 2.5 Gb USB adapters in ProxMox.
https://youtu.be/sAfPm2CxfI4?si=I0hBZUPQvB2SiU4K
I’ve had to put the project on backburner due to IRL stuff, but I was able to use them on both Fedora 40 and Nintendo Switch with no issue
