Intel I350-T4 NIC (Quad port - pass-through individual ports)

[grandprix]

~$300 retail card

 

I'm, erm, frugal, so I set out for a quad NIC which was Intel only.  After doing a great deal of reading, I concluded that the I350-T4 really was the "only" choice to fit my needs.  A genuine server grade NIC card with four gigabit copper ports, on ESXi's list of compatible products and can be pass-through'ed by individual ports (keep one, two, or three as virtual NIC's if you want).  I know there are a few that are VM'ing unraid as well as, say, pfSense.  You may be in the market for one of these.

 

I offered $140 and it was accepted.  Maybe it was just a good day for me, or for the seller, so whether or not such an offer (or lower) would be accepted, I cannot say of course.  $179.99 (the buy it now price) isn't really bad though, but, again, I wanted it a little cheaper if I could.

 

Just a heads up for a seller that did right by me and received a good pull with all ports working wonderfully (benchmarked all four under various settings, with and without Direct Path I/O).

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/380952837015

[boxtor]

There is a Chinese brand with the same chipset that sells on ebay for about $100 for a 4 port card.  I have a 2 port and 4 port version and they work well.  I'm not sure how well they work in unRAID.

[anonomouse]

how would one of these differ from say an Intel Pro 1000 like this for example

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/39Y6138-IBM-INTEL-PRO-1000-PT-QUAD-PORT-PCIe-GIGABIT-ETHERNET-NIC-SERVER-ADAPTER-/131233334080?pt=US_Internal_Network_Cards&hash=item1e8e1dc340

[Nyago123]

The T4 is much newer.  The flip side of course is that you need to make sure the card will be supported for your OS (generally speaking - not actually specific to unRAID here).

 

As a user of PT cards, I learned the hard way there is a caveat with them - there is a model number that had forward compatibility problems with PCIe 2.0 and a later model that fixed that.  So if you're buying used you need to check on that: Intel notice.

 

[anonomouse]

thanks for the info