May 16, 20215 yr I have a few 10 gigabit network cards and would like to have my unRAID server act as a network switch. I have seen a few posts on how to have a 10 gig connection between the PC and server but those wanted to setup another subnet. I want to keep it all one sudnet and make sure my router can assign ip addresses to devices connected to the server. Setting up a docker or VM to run something like PFsense or opnsense but not a router but something that may be stripped down so it is not bloated with router features I will not use and to only act as a switch would work
May 16, 20215 yr 12 minutes ago, sgibbers17 said: I have a few 10 gigabit network cards and would like to have my unRAID server act as a network switch. I have seen a few posts on how to have a 10 gig connection between the PC and server but those wanted to setup another subnet. I want to keep it all one sudnet and make sure my router can assign ip addresses to devices connected to the server. Setting up a docker or VM to run something like PFsense or opnsense but not a router but something that may be stripped down so it is not bloated with router features I will not use and to only act as a switch would work Easiest way would be to just bridge all the cards together. A network bridge *is* software level switching. Don't expect good performance with this. Even if your CPU has hardware acceleration for network loads (some xeons) it's going to be substantially slower at the task than the FPGAs used in standard switching applications. It's why routers make poor switches and switches make poor routers. Servers can be pretty good firewalls and routers but they are generally awful switches.
May 16, 20215 yr It's entirely possible to build your own 10Gbe switch, and with excellent performance. This man did it in 2016, when the economics made more sense. Now, they don't. His solution would be much more expensive than an off-the-shelf switch at today's prices. There's even an operating system that's optimised for this kind of work - VyOS. It wouldn't be feasible to use an Unraid server for this purpose though.
July 27, 20232 yr Hi, like @John_Msaid, i actually have a VyOS VM with 3 10gb nic passed-through and it work really fine!
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