Hardware

Hi guys,

Does anyone know if this card will work? 

http://www.intel.com/network/connectivity/products/pro1000pt_dualport_server_adapter.htm

My main concern is the PCIE slot.  Apparently for high end stuff, PCIE is becoming the standard.

I was planning on buying two of these and dropping them into a Dell Poweredge SC440 and praying, but figured that might not be enough.

I read somewhere else that this might require me to use a beta build of monowall??  How risky is that - this is a fairly critical application.

Thanks kindly
w

I don't think it'll work unless you use the 1.3 beta. It has some state tracking issues that may be a major problem for you, or may not be an issue at all. Other than that I'm not aware of any problems with it.

Your link to the Intel page lists it as 82571, which does appear on the FreeBSD/i386 6.2-release hardware page (http://www.freebsd.org/releases/6.2R/hardware-i386.html#ETHERNET)

but it does not appear on the 4.11-release page (http://www.freebsd.org/releases/4.11R/hardware-i386.html#ETHERNET), suggesting that it should work on the 1.3 betas but not on 1.2 or earlier versions of mono.

We've been using 1.3b2 with the em driver (Pro 1000 GT pci) for 6 months on 2 monos without any glaring issues.

db

Thanks for the info guys.

Two quick followup questions:

1) When is 1.3 expected to be released?
2) Does 1.3 work on SMP machines?  We have a dual core P2.8, it'd be nice to use both cores but prbly not neccesary.

Thanks again-
w

official mono images will run on smp machines using only 1 core. Search the forum for a link to unsupported images that have been compiled with smp support.

db

hey wideLoad,

did you get this card to work?

I am looking at putting a firewall/mono in bridge mode in front of all our servers and was looking at something like this card in a p4/3Ghz/1GB box.

Does anyone know of any performance/throughput tests with gigabit networks and the minimum spec for the box?

I'd like to use some fairly low power/minimum fans embedded system if possible but don't know what the min spec I'm likely to need to get as high throughput as possible.  Ironically, PC hardware is so cheap that embedded systems don't work out that much cheaper, but I'd like the reliability of not having tons of fans/PSUs etc around.