Upgraded my Proxmox nics · Home Lab Explorers

6d (edited) • Hardware

Upgraded my Proxmox nics

I’ve upgraded the old Intel X520 NICs in my Lenovo P520 workstations to Intel XXV710 network adapters, which natively support 25 Gbps per port (in addition to 10 Gbps and 1 Gbps). The XXV710 is designed for much more efficiently and successfully allows the processor to enter deep C-states.

Even though the card is faster, your Lenovo P520 will likely consume less power in idle mode. While I’m not upgrading to 25GbE just yet, this prepares my setup for future developments.

The Intel XXV710 features superior hardware offloading and excellent SR-IOV support. The Proxmox advantage: you can split the physical 25G port into dozens of "Virtual Functions" (VFs) and pass them directly through to your VMs. This provides your VMs with near 100% hardware speed at extremely low CPU overhead.

Furthermore, if you utilize SDN (Software-Defined Networking) within Proxmox and set up virtual network tunnels between nodes, these packets are processed by the XXV710's hardware rather than being handled by your P520's processor. In short: you get increased speed, lower latency, a lower idle power bill, and better integration with modern Proxmox features.

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Upgraded my Proxmox nics