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The 10GbE-to-25GbE Migration That Every vSAN Cluster Needs — And Most Are Putting Off

A 4-node vSAN ESA cluster with all-NVMe storage generates approximately 18 Gbps of east-west replication traffic during heavy write workloads. On 10GbE NICs, that traffic saturates both ports — and any additional management or vMotion traffic competes for the same saturated link. The Intel E810-XXVDA2 is a dual-port 25GbE SFP28 adapter that more than doubles the available bandwidth (50 Gbps aggregate vs 20 Gbit/s) while fitting in the same PCIe slot, same SFP28 cage, and same driver stack as the 10GbE NIC it replaces. It is the NIC upgrade that vSAN, Ceph, and hyperconverged clusters have been waiting for — and at a price point that dropped roughly 40 percent since the E810 launched in 2021.

Spécifications techniques

Paramètre	spécification
Jeu de puces	Intel Ethernet Controller E810 (Columbiaville)
Ports	2x SFP28 (25Porter), also supports 10GbE and 1GbE via SFP+ optics
Host Interface	PCIe 4.0 x8 (64 Gbps — sufficient for 2x 25GbE bidirectional)
RDMA	iWARP and RoCE v2 (configurable in firmware, not both simultaneously)
SR-IOV	Jusqu'à 256 virtual functions per port
ADQ (Application Device Queues)	Dedicated hardware queues per application — isolates latency-sensitive workloads
DDP (Dynamic Device Personalization)	Reprogram packet processing pipeline for specific protocols (GTP-U, VXLAN, NVGRE without CPU penalty)
Stateless Offloads	VXLAN, NVGRE, GENEVE, IP-in-IP, checksum, TSO, LRO
Pouvoir	~8W typical (both ports active, 25Porter, Câbles DAC)
Facteur de forme	Low-profile PCIe, full-height bracket included
Physical	167 X 69 millimètre (standard LP PCIe card)
Câble	SFP28: DAC passive copper 1-5m, active optical 10-100m. SFP+: 10GbE compatible.
Prise en charge du système d'exploitation	VMware ESXi 7.0 U3+, 8.0+ \| Windows Server 2019/2022/2025 \| RHEL 8.6+/9.x \| SLES 15 SP4+ \| Ubuntu 20.04/22.04/24.04
Driver	In-box for VMware ESXi 8.0+, RHEL 8.6+, Ubuntu 22.04+. Intel ice driver for older kernels.
Compatible Servers	All Dell, xFusion, Lenovo servers with PCIe 4.0 x8+ slot
garantie	3-année (with server)

ADQ — The Feature That Separates the E810 from Every Other 25GbE NIC

Application Device Queues (ADQ) is an Intel-exclusive feature that dedicates specific hardware receive queues to specific applications. A Redis instance on CPU core 4 gets its own dedicated NIC queue. A PostgreSQL instance on CPU core 8 gets a different queue. Packets arrive at the application’s memory space without the kernel’s network stack touching them — no context switch, no CPU cache pollution from competing network traffic. For latency-sensitive databases, ADQ reduces P99 tail latency by 40-60 percent compared to standard RSS-based NIC queue distribution. No other 25GbE NIC on the market offers this capability at this price point.

iWARP vs RoCE v2 — When to Choose Which

Factor	iWARP	RoCE v2
Transport	TCP/IP (routable, works across subnets)	UDP/IP + DCB/PFC (lossless Ethernet required)
Switch requirements	Any Ethernet switch. No DCB/PFC required.	DCB-capable switch with PFC and ETS enabled.
Configuration complexity	Low. Enable iWARP in driver, assign IP, done.	Medium. Requires switch-side PFC buffer tuning.
Best for	Cross-subnet, multi-hop, mixed-traffic environments	Single-subnet, dedicated storage fabric, lowest latency

Compatible Platforms

PCIe 4.0 x8 slot. Compatible with Dell R660, R760, R770, R7715, R860, R960, xFusion 1288H/2288H/2488H/5288/5885H V7, Lenovo ThinkSystem V3/V4. SFP28 ports accept SFP28 DAC, SFP28 SR/LR optics, or SFP+ optics at 10GbE.