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SuperMicro VMware Home Lab – Part 2

Merry Christmas everyone!
While I am posting this after Christmas, I had an early Christmas present this year. Almost 12 months ago I bought a new lab which i discuss In Part 1, my lab just got a tiny bit better with out me doing anything, feel a little silly for not figuring it out earlier.

My SuperMicro system is the 6027TR-HTQF and comes with a 40Gb infinband controller onboard. The System manual does not say what model it is, only refers to infiniband. I remember in my readings I saw “ConnectX-3 QDR Infiniband” and didnt really look into it to much. So i bought 10gbe cards and have been using that as my networking. Recently I wanted to really add in some pcie disks for VSAN and was looking it having a go at infiniband to free up the single pcie slot.

So I downloaded the mellanox vibs and thought I would query the hardware. to my supprise I saw the bellow

Device Type:      ConnectX3
Part Number: Super_Micro_X9DRT-HIBQF
Description: ConnectX-3 VPI adapter card; single-port QSFP; QDR IB (40Gb/s) and 10GigE; PCIe3.0 x8
PSID: SM_2181000001000
PCI Device Name: mt4099_pci_cr1
Port1 MAC: 002590df1289
Port2 MAC: 002590df128a
Versions: Current Available
FW 2.35.5100 N/A
PXE 3.4.0460 N/A

Wow it is a VPI adapter which means it does both Infiniband and Ethernet. I was wondering why I was seeing 2 Mellanox ethernet adapters in vCenter. This was awesome!!

So now I needed to convert QSFP to SFP, this is known as a QSA adapter. I bought one locally so I could get it before Christmas. I bought one of these from FS.com

Woot fits like a glove, and yes I did not have low profile brackets for my 10Gbe NICs.

Looking in vCenter we can see the ConnectX adapter is connected and working. Think I might pick up more of these servers now, can always do with more GeeBees.

Cheers!!

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