Topic: Intel e100 and e1000 drivers for v5.6

[Shad Lords]

Sorry for the double post but I just realized that the original post was quite a way back.

For those of you just waiting for the intel drivers for sme v5.6, I have
downloaded and compiled the latest version of the drivers for all e100 and
e1000 based cards. I have also compiled the following utilities that go
with the drivers: iANS, inic-snmp, procfg, and procfgd.

You can find them here:

http://lordsfam.net/downloads/production/intel_drivers/

These have been tested on single and dual processor boards and appear to
work great. As always please try theses yourself on a test box before
loading them on a production box.

After installing these rpm's the server manager will pick up on the new drivers.

-Shad

[Steve]

What are you doing on the server to need the 1gbps NIC?  It is my understanding that a single IDE only has about 10MB/s throughput or 80mbps, which is about all I seem to get on my server.  Are some of you running file servers or servers with raid arrays or fast SCSI's?  If so, what kind of throughput are  you getting and what hard drives (or how many) does it take to get enough throughput to saturate a 1000mb connection.

Has anyone tried multiple NIC's for added throughput?  I am considering setting up a high-performance, fast file server for a media server (that will have a lot of video transfer to it).  I trying to decide whether to run freeBSD or if e-smith/linux will be stable/fast enough.  Each client needs the server to be at least as fast as it is to their local hard drive (just regular HD, not SCSI).  Would 100mbps be fast enough?

My idea was to have each client connected via 100mb to a switch and get one of the switches with a 1000mb uplink to the e-smith file server.  However, I have never run a 1000mb NIC.  Can any of you list your experience with them?

I thought that if 100mb would be as fast as a normal desktop HD, then I could have a server with a 1000mb NIC which could support 10 clients simultaneously. (Obviously, the server will need fast and possibly multiple hard drives in a raid array)

Thanks!

Steve

[Steve]

What are you doing on the server to need the 1gbps NIC?  It is my understanding that a single IDE only has about 10MB/s throughput or 80mbps, which is about all I seem to get on my server.  Are some of you running file servers or servers with raid arrays or fast SCSI's?  If so, what kind of throughput are  you getting and what hard drives (or how many) does it take to get enough throughput to saturate a 1000mb connection.

Has anyone tried multiple NIC's for added throughput?  I am considering setting up a high-performance, fast file server for a media server (that will have a lot of video transfer to it).  I trying to decide whether to run freeBSD or if e-smith/linux will be stable/fast enough.  Each client needs the server to be at least as fast as it is to their local hard drive (just regular HD, not SCSI).  Would 100mbps be fast enough?

My idea was to have each client connected via 100mb to a switch and get one of the switches with a 1000mb uplink to the e-smith file server.  However, I have never run a 1000mb NIC.  Can any of you list your experience with them?

I thought that if 100mb would be as fast as a normal desktop HD, then I could have a server with a 1000mb NIC which could support 10 clients simultaneously. (Obviously, the server will need fast and possibly multiple hard drives in a raid array)

Thanks!

Steve

[Shad Lords]

I currently run a dual 1Gb PIII system with 2Gb of ram and a 3ware 7500-12 raid controller with 10 drives.  I have 9 of the drives in a raid-5 array and 1 hot spare.  The 3ware does provide enough throughput to almost saturate the 1Gb card.  I have 1 client machine with a 1Gb card and 5 others with 100Mb cards.  I Typically see 30-50Mb/s (thats megaBYTES not bits) on the gig interface with peaks between 80-100Mb/s.  All this due to the sysmon graphs and watching via iptraf.

When doing a single 4Gb file copy from the client machine to the server I usually see about 25Mb/s.  This is the maximum the hard drive on the client can do.  When copying that file from the server to a NULL device then I can achieve between 90-100Mb/s.

-Shad

[benja]

Hello Shad,

I plan to install a new IBM xSeries 235 "business server". I choose to use SME 5.5 (i download 5.6 but i have no time to test it so i stay in 5.5, don't know if it's a good choice ...). I'm very exciting in using this new hardware but embedded NIC give me trouble cause it's not recognize by SME.This hardware is given whith an inboard NIC "Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabyte Ethernet Card". The driver is given but i need to compile it.  I try to download the developement kit for 5.5 but i can't install it (error, library not found ...). I'm looking for someone having a full dev SME 5.5. I think it's possible to compile on one plateforme and to use it in another one. Do you know someone that can do this compilation for me

Thanks,
benja

[Anonymous]

When doing a single 4Gb file copy from the client machine to the server I usually see about 25Mb/s.  This is the maximum the hard drive on the client can do.  When copying that file from the server to a NULL device then I can achieve between 90-100Mb/s.

-Shad

I have been testing performance copying 4gb binary files back and forth, and then using fc (file compare) to verify the files are the same. I am interested in how to copy a file from the server to a NULL device? What is that, how do you do it?
Dan

[bushinc]

The e1000 drivers are already built into SME5.6, you just have to manually set the driver as autodetect doesn't work.

[bushinc]

> What are you doing on the server to need the 1gbps NIC?

The difference between 100MB and 1000MB is dramatic.  Plus you can now purchase GB switches from Dell for an incredibly low price....  Even my low end PE400SC servers have a GB NIC built-in.