The standard 24 or 48 port SFP+ switch is 10 times the price of the
equivalent switch with 24 or 48 port SFP. The same is true for the optics.
I never saw many cheap 48port 1U sfp switches as people bought copper
at that speed so the ones that were around were relatively expensive.
With 10G it's been the opposite, nobody was using copper so SFP+ is
cheap. Only recently has copper 10G started to become common, a bit too
late to be worth bothering with now and as there are no copper SFP+
Having new servers switch to copper instead of sfp is a nuisance
Optic price depends on volume, 10G are cheap now so 1G being the old
line that's about to become rare are dirt cheap.
2.5 and 4 Gbit/s SFP modules are available and cheap. It is just that
ethernet ports will not take advantage of the extra speed.
Yes, they likely need new chips so may end up closer to 10G switch price
It would be an improvement if we can get 2.5 or 4 Gbit/s ethernet on SFP
instead of paying for an all SFP+ switch.
I disagree, stick to 10G get the volume up and hence price down.
Splitting the market enables the market to be tiered to keep some
prices higher than they might have been.
Same needs to happen with mm fibre, stop buying that junk and make
SM even cheaper.
brandon
SFP+ Copper Twinax is another option for 10G to save on the transceivers
Not really.
You can get 10G optics for sub-$10 and patch cords for cheap too,
so why spend >$50 on DAC cables when you can go fiber and save
space and money?
Walking into a colo and seeing orange or aqua cables always
makes me sad as people overpaid and created themselves a future problem.
- Jared
> SFP+ Copper Twinax is another option for 10G to save on the
transceivers
Not really.
You can get 10G optics for sub-$10 and patch cords for cheap too,
so why spend >$50 on DAC cables when you can go fiber and save
space and money?
Walking into a colo and seeing orange or aqua cables always
makes me sad as people overpaid and created themselves a future problem.
2x 850nm SFP+ @ $16
2m multimode jumper @ $3.16
Vs
2m SFP+ DAC @ $18
(From Fiberstore)
Then you have the issue of Intel NICs refusing to support any optical
modules that dont show up as Intel (and the associated work arounds, etc)
DACs are usually about 40% cheaper for server interconnect.
Then you have the issue of Intel NICs refusing to support any optical modules that dont show up as Intel (and the associated work arounds, etc)
I just purchased some empty Intel X520-DA2 cards and then picked up the E10GSFPSR-compatible optics for them from Fiberstore.
I was worried about the compatibility issues, but they working great between my vSphere hosts and an HP Procurve 5406R V2 with J9538A 8p 10G-GbE SFP+ v2 zl modules (which happens to be filled with J9150A X132 compatible optics also from Fiberstore).
The switch complains that they are 3rd party and throws a big scary warning that HP will shun you for support, but they light up and pass traffic just the same.
Tim Jackson <jackson.tim@gmail.com> 1/29/2016 7:58 AM >>>
> SFP+ Copper Twinax is another option for 10G to save on the
transceivers
Not really.
You can get 10G optics for sub-$10 and patch cords for cheap too,
so why spend >$50 on DAC cables when you can go fiber and save
space and money?
Walking into a colo and seeing orange or aqua cables always
makes me sad as people overpaid and created themselves a future problem.
2x 850nm SFP+ @ $16
2m multimode jumper @ $3.16
Vs
2m SFP+ DAC @ $18
(From Fiberstore)
Then you have the issue of Intel NICs refusing to support any optical
modules that dont show up as Intel (and the associated work arounds, etc)
DACs are usually about 40% cheaper for server interconnect.
"Alex Hargrove" <ahargrove@cgresd.net> writes:
I just purchased some empty Intel X520-DA2 cards and then picked up
the E10GSFPSR-compatible optics for them from Fiberstore.
Note that this requirement is implemented in the driver. YMMV depending
on OS, but in Linux you can disable it with the usual warnings by
setting 'allow_unsupported_sfp=1' :
bjorn@canardo:~$ modinfo -p ixgbe
max_vfs:Maximum number of virtual functions to allocate per physical function - default is zero and maximum value is 63. (Deprecated) (uint)
allow_unsupported_sfp:Allow unsupported and untested SFP+ modules on 82599-based adapters (uint)
debug:Debug level (0=none,...,16=all) (int)
Bjørn