40Gbps on 4x QDR ConnectX-2 VPI cards / Win10

Infrastructure & Networking Adapters and Cables InfiniBand/VPI Adapter Cards
1

I recently bought a pair of used Mellanox Infiniband 4x QDR ConnectX-2 VPI cards. One cars is single port, the other is dual port.

I will use them to connect my workstation to a server for HPC applications.

I am running Windows 10 on both systems. If that helps the systems are somewhat old platform, 2x Xeon X5670 CPUs for each node.

The seller of the Mellanox cards told me that it will be difficult to reach 40G rates on Win10 except:

  1. I use a 12K 12 port switch

  2. I use a Linux to Linux configuration.

I don’t want to lose time learning and configuring Linux OS, and i don’t want to buy an expensive switch either!

Do you think it’s possible to reach the maximum rate (40G) of the cards by any means?

2

in principle, it is possible to achieve optimum bandwidth over “aggregated” Mellanox CX-2 adapters but I’m not sure you can get as much as 40Gb/s using your old platform but then you’ll need to ensure the following pre-conditions in your system:

1.In case of Windows platform -

  • to line up with the proper OS, driver & fw that supports CX-2 vpi adapter, which is: Windows 8.1, WinOF driver ver. 4.80 & firmware v2.9.120 (Windows 10 is not supported )

  • by “teaming” the entire CX-2 adapters on Windows OS (in case teaming is supported in Windows client)

  1. the same goes for Linux- you need to line up here as well with the proper OS, driver & fw that supports CX-2 vpi adapter

Can be found in the release-notes of each OS (see link bellow)

http://www.mellanox.com/page/products_dyn?product_family=26&mtag=linux_sw_drivers http://www.mellanox.com/page/products_dyn?product_family=26&mtag=linux_sw_drivers

In close, Mellanox CX-2 adapters are already EOF (end-of-life) in terms of sale & Mellanox support. So I suggest you overview the advanced ConnectX-3/4/5 adapters that will provide you the required throughput