Dell Poweredge R710 iSOE key DDR3L Broadcom Quad NICs
Comments (5) Finally I’ve got time to inspect each individual part thoroughly and the following is my findings.
- Dell Powerdge iSCSI Offload Key for LOM NICs. Strange funny little stuff that makes a hell lot of difference for some people. Broadcom charges this for extra on their 5709 NICs (5709C not 5709S), the same apply to HP Pro-liant NICs.According to one of the EQL engineer we talked to, it is still best NOT TO use 5709C as ISOE HBA in ESX4.1 as it will lost Jumbo Frame feature and some other nice features will be gone if HAB mode is used with EQL boxes.
- DDR3 Low Voltage ECC+Buffer R-DIMM 8GB by Samsung: It’s nice to have that 20% saving, but when you add 2DPC, your nice 20% power saving (ie, 1.35V) will be disabled automatically (ie, raise to 1.5V instead), good part is you still have that 1333Mhz bandwidth with 2DPC. DDR3L 1.35V will only apply when it’s in 1DPC mode.
What about 3DPC? Old story applies, it’s 800Mhz, tested it and proved it and if populate with 3DPC and fully filled that 18 DIMMs (ie, 144GB), it will take twice the time to verify and boot the server, so it’s better not to as you lost 40% bandwidth is very important for ESX.
Dell’s on-line documentation has no where indicates my findings and my findings completes what I found at HP’s resources previously. Btw, why does DDR3L still need that aluminum cap for heat dissipation if it’s voltage is really that low?
- Broadcom NetXtreme II 5709 Gigabit NIC w TOE & iSCSI Offload, Quad Port, Copper, PCIe-4: Nice to have two of this besides the embedded quad NICs, so total you will have 12 NICs within one server. The chipset is still BCM5709CC0KPBG, there is no iSCSI key found on the NIC, guess it’s been embedded already as well.
