1

I want to understand about fiber 10g switches data transfer. Before asking my question i want to explain you guys about my office. I have one server and 25 computers. This office is now working on 1g lan speed. Server and computers all have 1g network card. But data transfer speed is not enough anymore. Many users use files from server at the same time. Work load on server is getting heavier day by day and I need to upgrade data transfer speed to 10g. Server has 4 Seagate ironwolf pro 8 TB hard drivers with raid 10 mode. I am thinking to change the switch with 10g slot and add 10g network card on server. Here is my question ; I am planning to change my switch which one has 10g slot. Does switch send the data packages to server 10g actual speed? For example switch sums 10 pieces 1g ports (10x1g = 10g) and send packages to the server 10g actual speed? I meant do I have 10g actual speed on server in one second? Does 10g fiber switch work as I described? Thx and good day

Melih Eroğlu
  • 11
  • 1
  • 2
  • 1
    In addition to upping the network throughput you need to look at your disk IO - it would surprise me if your current disk setup would be able to sustain anything close to 10 gigabit transfers - unless you have a lot of RAM and doing mainly reads to a limited subset of files. Migrating to something like ZFS with an SSD cache could make a big difference as well. – davidgo Apr 02 '18 at 21:00

1 Answers1

3

In response to your question... a 10 Gb/s link doesn't work "like 10x 1 Gb/s links"... it works "like 1x 10 Gb/s link". That said, 10x 1 Gb/s hosts should all be able to communicate at near line-speed with the one 10 Gb/s host.

The maximum throughput / data rate on the wire should be close to 10 gigabits per second (~1.25 gigabytes per second).

You can use copper, fiber or direct attach SFP (i.e: fiber isn't your only option).

You'll also need to check the switch's "fabric" capacity will be sufficient for your needs.

However, please bear the following in mind (originally a comment):

  • What is the workload? I would expect that 1Gb/s should be plenty for a "normal" 25-person office...
  • Have you confirmed that the computers are actually communicating at ~1Gb/s? (use iperf3)
  • Have you confirmed that the server's array is able to provide for, and saturate a 1Gb/s link?

Purchasing 10Gb/s hardware could be a big waste of money that doesn't solve your issue.

Attie
  • 19,231
  • 5
  • 58
  • 73
  • I did ethernet teaming. But i did not do that on switch, i did on the Windows Server. I know Windows Server ethernet teaming only for data reading. When clients want to write something to servers discs only one ethernet is working on teaming. But reading is more important than writing. Office is about animation studio. Anyway.... Also i ran disk speed test software on my server. Avarage read and write speed is around 350 MB/s. So 1g ethernet is able to transfer 125MB/s. That means i need 4 x 1g ethernet teaming or 10g ethernet for achieve to my disk speeds on server. Am i rgiht? – Melih Eroğlu Apr 03 '18 at 16:05