10 gigabit NIC test

I got a couple of the new Intel 10GbE NICS (X540-T1) and tested them out with unRAID.

unRAID recognized it and ixgbe loaded automatically.

Ramdisk-to-Ramdisk throughput was about 400mb/s, or about 4x max on gigabit Ethernet, but it was really pounding the CPU utilization on my bench box.  I'll report back when I try it with a heafter CPU.

For those who will say that it is wasted speed since the HD can't keep up with that, there are 3 reasons for me:

1) buffers... with 16GB of RAM in unRAID, I can write large files fast to unRAID, and let the write caching handle them.

2) I use a RAID0 cache drive that delivers ~350mb/sec

3) multiple small-file accesses are very "chatty" over SMB, and 10GbE can improve that, even with existing spinning drives.

Thanks BubbaQ!  Ive been thinking about buying those cards for my SAN and ESXi boxes and moving off fibre.