[K12OSN] Just about ready to make a purchase

[Jim Kronebusch]

> Having said that, I've never seen performance numbers for dual-dual
> adapters in a quad-bond configuration on a PCIx or PCIe bus.  It is
> certainly possible that either configuration would work.  Which of
> them is more scalable, and probably cheaper?  Almost definitely the
> subnet-per-NIC approach.
> 
> -dhbarr.

:-) I haven't seen those types of performance numbers either.  I am set up that I can
easily incorporate placing individual NIC's on separate VLAN's.  I believe I don't have
room enough in the server to put 4 separate NICs.  However I could still use 2 dual nics
and put each of them on a separate VLAN, but then if the PCI bus is the limitation and
not the teaming, I should essentially end up with the same problem.  

Unfortunately I don't have a good way to test all methods before implementation. 
Luckily if the network does end up being a bottleneck, re-configuration of the network
should be fairly trivial.  

Another thought about NICs, 2 of the GB NIC's are actually onboard and the other 2 are a
PCIx dual port card.  So only 2 GB ports would be on the PCIx bus, would that help
alleviate the PCIx bottleneck?

Also a note the comment in an earlier post about splitting the mirrors onto separate
controller interfaces, it looks like for an extra $300 I can split the backplane into
2x5 hotplug backplanes.  I will contact Dell to see if this would allow me to spread my
RAID array across both on separate interfaces.

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