Intel 10GE x520 Cards Model E10G41BFSR

[wburn]

We are getting ready do purchase new hardware (HP DL380s G6 72GB of ram) including new 10GE cards. We are wanting to use Intel's new chip sets (82599) that are being used in their x520 10GE cards in particular their E10G41BFSR card. I have not been able to find them on the supported hardware list for VSphere and wondered if anyone has tried using these cards?

[thecakeisalie]

According to the Quickspecs for the HP DL360 g5 - the only supported 10GbE adapter for your server is the NC522SFP. The quickspecs HP quickspecs for this card indicate that the controller is actually a NETXEN NX3031.

HP has already certified this card for use with vSphere, and the link to the driver for vSphere is linked in the footnotes on the HCL.

[wburn]

I understand that HP only list one card they sell but I was looking to use the Intel becuse of more robust features and performance.

[thecakeisalie]

I would strongly recommend purchasing the HP supported/recommended card, since this has already been tested with the existing firmware in your server and is certified and supported to work in this configuration. Without proper firmware support for the card, you are likely to run into firmware and IRQ incompatibilities and you will not receive support from either VMware or HP for the Intel card in that server because it is not supported.

I would recommend contacting Intel or HP to determine if there is a technical reason that the card hasn't been certified for use with the server or for use with vSphere, as it is likely that there is a functional reason that it has not passed the certification for either to date. The vendor of the card is responsible for certifying it for use with ESX.

The card you are referring to actually uses Intels 82599 10GbE controller, which might help you in the future when searching for support or querying the supportability matrix.

[CRAIG DODSON]

Having just been burned by the HP NC522SFP I would say avoid this card at all costs. This Emulex/NetXen card has a serious firmward bug in the shiping version of the card, and HP has been unable to provide me with a working flash utility to upgrade it to the "fixed" version. We put them in to lower VMotion times (needed for large SQL and Exchange VMs) but the cards would randomly stop working and only a reboot would fix them. I too bought into the "use an HP card in an HP sever" but I'm over that now. The support for this card through HP is very, very poor and I'm going back to Intel NICs.

Lesson learned...

CD

[rsandlan]

100% in agreement with cdodson2.

We were running the original Netxen cards, followed by the HP version (NC522) and experiencing these drop outs.

HP were unable to provide us with a method to upgrade the firmware on these cards, and we had to remove the cards from ESX hosts, put in a Windows box to upgrade firmware to "fixed" version (4.0.516) and then put back in to ESX hosts. This version of firmware gave us "IO ROM Error" so we had to repeat these steps to upgrade to the 4.0.520 version - this is still causing us "drop out" problems. All a bit of a headache.

cdodson2, can you advise on which card you ended up going for, and your experiences?

Many thanks

Richard

[CRAIG DODSON]

Hello,

We put Intel X520-SR2 cards (dual-port 10gb LC Fiber includes SFPs) into 7 DL585G2 servers running vSphere 4.0 U1 about 2.5 months ago. They are connected to a Cisco 6509 core. They have been absolutely flawless since the day they were installed. You will have to download and install the driver (it's not in vSphere) but other than that, there is nothing else to mention.

Best of luck to you!

CD

[MarkHAtIntel]

A new driver is available that includes support for the Intel® Ethernet Server Adapter X520 Series: VMware ESX/ESXi 4.0 Driver CD for Intel 82598 and 82599 10 Gigabit Ethernet Controllers.

Mark H

[bascheew]

I just installed an Intel X520 10GE card in an HP running ESXi 4 and the NIC didn't show up. So I installed the driver that was mentioned by using vihostupdate.pl and got the message "The update completed successfully, but the system needs to be rebooted for the changes to be effective." So I rebooted, but the NIC still does not show up. Any suggestions on what to do next?

I'll keep searching the forums and post anything if I figure it out.

[bascheew]

I posted too soon! After about 5 - 10 minutes the network card showed up. It's listed as "Unknown" but it appears to be functioning fine.