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Is it possible to buy PCI Gigabit Switch? or convert a 4 port PCI Nic into a Gigabit switch?
Hello,
We are trying to conserve rackspace and was wondering if it is possible to use a 4 port gigabit NIC as a switch or if it is possible to buy a gigabit network switch as a PCI express card.
The situation is this, we current collocate a number of 1ru Dell R610' servers in different datacenters. All Servers are running XenServer and within XenServer we have a virtualized security appliance (netscaler) running.
Rather than expose everything to the internet, we would like to connect our WAN drop to the NIC port used for the netscaler as an inbound connection, and use another NIC port as the internal connection from the Netscaler to internal resources such as the iDrac port and the XenServer Management port.
We have attempted to use virtualized switch appliance but, this still required the XenServer Management port to be exposed to the internet to make everything work. The solution is to use a physical switch, but it seem expensive to purchase an additional RU space just for a small switch.
We were wondering if anyone had any ideas on how this problem could be solved.
Thanks.
We are trying to conserve rackspace and was wondering if it is possible to use a 4 port gigabit NIC as a switch or if it is possible to buy a gigabit network switch as a PCI express card.
The situation is this, we current collocate a number of 1ru Dell R610' servers in different datacenters. All Servers are running XenServer and within XenServer we have a virtualized security appliance (netscaler) running.
Rather than expose everything to the internet, we would like to connect our WAN drop to the NIC port used for the netscaler as an inbound connection, and use another NIC port as the internal connection from the Netscaler to internal resources such as the iDrac port and the XenServer Management port.
We have attempted to use virtualized switch appliance but, this still required the XenServer Management port to be exposed to the internet to make everything work. The solution is to use a physical switch, but it seem expensive to purchase an additional RU space just for a small switch.
We were wondering if anyone had any ideas on how this problem could be solved.
Thanks.
Don Johnston
You can bridge the ports, but it's not going to have anywhere near the performance of an actual switch.
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Hi Don and John,
Thanks for your suggestions. The small switch might be an option, If I can find really short cat5e cables ie <10cm It should be able to just hang of the back of the server.
Thanks
Thanks for your suggestions. The small switch might be an option, If I can find really short cat5e cables ie <10cm It should be able to just hang of the back of the server.
Thanks
You can get 12 inch (I think) and 18 inch cables (for sure). You need a source of AC power of course.
I have a couple of these switches and they perform well.
I have a couple of these switches and they perform well.
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