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Your Storage Cluster Is Bottlenecked at 25GbE. The Next Step Is Not Two More 25GbE Ports. It Is One 100GbE Port.

Adding a second 25GbE port and configuring LACP gives you 50 Gbps aggregate — but no single flow exceeds 25 Гбит/с. A vMotion migration of a 500 GB VM still takes 3 минуты. A Ceph recovery after a drive failure still runs at 25 Gbps per node. The Intel E810-CQDA2 is a dual-port 100GbE QSFP28 adapter that delivers 100 Gbps per port, line rate, with RDMA support and the same Intel E810 driver stack that VMware, РЕЛ, and Windows Server have shipped inbox since 2021. It is the NIC that turns your network bottleneck into headroom.

Технические характеристики

Параметр	Спецификация
Чипсет	Intel Ethernet Controller E810 (Columbiaville)
Порты	2x QSFP28 (100GbE per port), also supports 50GbE, 40Нести, 25Нести, and 10GbE via breakout/QSFP+ cables
Хост-интерфейс	PCIe 4.0 х16 (256 Gbps — sufficient for 2x 100GbE bidirectional)
RDMA	iWARP and RoCE v2 (configurable in firmware)
SR-IOV	Вплоть до 256 virtual functions per port
ADQ (Application Device Queues)	Dedicated hardware queues per application — isolates latency-sensitive workloads at 100GbE
DDP (Dynamic Device Personalization)	Reprogram packet processing pipeline for specific protocols
Stateless Offloads	VXLAN, NVGRE, GENEVE, IP-in-IP, checksum, TSO, LRO at 100GbE line rate
Власть	~14W typical (both ports active, 100Нести, Кабели ЦАП)
Фактор формы	Full-height, полудлина (FHHL) PCIe (x16 physical connector)
Physical	167 Икс 111 мм (FHHL PCIe card)
Кабель	КСФП28: DAC passive copper 1-3m, active optical (AOC) 3-30м, QSFP28 SR4 optics up to 100m, QSFP28 LR4 optics up to 10km
Поддержка ОС	VMware ESXi 7.0 U3+, 8.0+ \| Windows Server 2019/2022/2025 \| РЕЛ 8.6+/9.x \| SLES 15 SP4+ \| Убунту 20.04/22.04/24.04
Driver	In-box for VMware ESXi 8.0+, РЕЛ 8.6+, Убунту 22.04+
Совместимые серверы	All Dell, xFusion, Lenovo servers with PCIe 4.0 слот x16
Гарантия	3-год (with server)

100GbE vs 4x 25GbE LACP — The Single-Flow Performance Gap

Сценарий	1x 100GbE (E810-CQDA2)	4x 25GbE LACP	Winner
Single 500 GB VM vMotion	~40 seconds (single 100 Gbps flow)	~160 seconds (single flow limited to 25 Гбит/с)	100Нести (4x faster on single-flow workloads)
10 concurrent 50 GB vMotions	~40 seconds (10 flows, each gets ~10 Gbps)	~40 seconds (10 flows distributed across 4x 25GbE ports)	Tie (LACP is effective for multi-flow)
Ceph OSD recovery (single PG backfill)	~40 minutes (100 Gbps single flow)	~160 minutes	100Нести (single-flow dominates in Ceph)
NVMe-oF target (multi-initiator, 8 hosts)	~95 Gbps aggregate (8 flows)	~90 Gbps aggregate (8 flows across 4 порты)	Tie (multi-initiator distributes well)

The single-flow advantage of 100GbE matters for three specific workloads: vMotion of large VMs, Ceph recovery, and backup/restore of large datasets. For multi-flow workloads, LACP with 4x 25GbE delivers comparable aggregate throughput at roughly the same cost.

Compatible Platforms

PCIe 4.0 x16 slot required for full 200 Gbps bidirectional bandwidth. Compatible with Dell R760, 770 рэндов, R7715, 860 рэндов, 960 рэндов, xFusion 2288H V7, 2488Х V7, 5885Х V7. QSFP28 ports accept QSFP28 DAC, QSFP28 AOC, or QSFP28 SR4/LR4 optics. 100GbE switches: Dell S5232F-ON (32x 100GbE), Arista 7060CX5, Cisco Nexus 9336C-FX2.