Mellanox 40GbE NICs for Sync/ISCSI Data

[RichardParrySC]

We're new to StarWind, we typically deploy traditional virtualised environments.

I am looking into StarWind VSAN for creating a 2-node setup and using NVMe drives with Storage Spaces on Hyper-V as the shared storage. I've submit a separate thread with questions on if this is possible.

If it is, we'd need a fairly fast sync/ISCSI link between systems to make use of this and therefore would like to look at using Mellanox as it's our go-to.

If we're using Gen 4.0 PCIe NVMe in each node, running in RAID 10 (on Storage Spaces), what speed NIC's would you recommend for a 2-node setup for the SYNC/ISCSI data connections? There's no need for a switch, so it would be direct connected - I was thinking 40GbE or 100GbE.

Please let me know your thoughts and if this has been done before and what is recommended/tried/tested.


Thanks.

[yaroslav (staff)]

Hi welcome to StarWind Forum.
Before buying NICs, I'd recommend testing storage performance locally as discussed here https://www.starwindsoftware.com/best-p ... practices/ to be sure that networking will not bottleneck storage performance.