Thanks for the question, Dean. It’s important for NIC’s to support more than just the fastest speed to ensure compatibility with older connections and cabling; network environments are diverse, and different devices or network segments may have varying speed capabilities or requirements.
As for choosing the right NIC, your best bet is really just thoroughly researching your system’s requirements. The connection should match with your existing network hardware; however, the components on the servers are easily upgradeable, so remember, you’re not stuck with one type of connection forever. You can add a PCI NIC with a different type and speed of connection and you can change your network switch to match the new connections, be it 10GB Copper/RJ-45 Connections or 10/25/40GB Fiber SFP connections.
Why is it important for NICs to support more than just the fastest speed, and how do you choose between which NIC you might need?
Hey Mike,
Great question, thanks for asking! Dell doesn’t have a central directory with that information, but we compiled a table together for Dell’s NDC’s compatible with 12th and 13th/14th gen servers.
Here’s the link to copy and paste if you’d like to check it out:
https://techmikeny.com/blogs/techtalk/you-asked-we-answered-dell-ndc-parts-chart
One thing that is daunting is the expansive list of NICs& NDCs have boards that look equivalent (eg 4×1G RJ45) but have very different prices and only Dell bingo numbers to distinguish them. given the evolution of the Ethernet chips, knowing which part is on the card is golden. Is there an xref somewhere for the Dell novitiates?
Hey Zach,
Good catch! Just fixed it, thank you for letting us know.
Good info, thanks. Under “Number of ports”: You have the captions and the cards mixed up, which is a bit unfortunate as the caption is part of the image!
These are wonderful ideas to keep old tech in our lives in a creative way!
Hey George and Adam,
Great suggestions! Thank you for letting us know what you’re interested in learning about. We incorporated info & recommended configs for media servers, routers/security gateways, gaming servers, administrative servers, and both types of hypervisors into our part 2 of this article.
Here it is if you’d like to check it out:
https://techmikeny.com/blogs/techtalk/even-more-servers-and-recommended-configurations
What about virtual machine hypervisors like Hyper-V or VMware ESXi servers? You should include that in your next article. :-)
So, you covered mostly server types no one is likely to run at home and ignored media servers, routers/security gateways, gaming servers, administrative servers (Ubiquiti admin, etc), and general-purpose virtualization hosts/hypervisors (of either VM or container variety)?
Hi Dustin, Yes, that is correct! That is the primary distinction between these two servers, but they both have the flex bay option available.
Thanks for sharing the images on what needs to be purchased. When you mention 12 bay vs 24 bay for the 720xd and 730xd this distinction is whether your server takes large form factor (LFF 3.5 inch) or small form factor (SFF 2.5 inch) hard drives right?
Thanks, Chad! We’re so happy to hear that. (And we’ve got some more in the works!☺)
Hello, Great videos! I find your videos of value and use.
Don’t forget that some (all?) machines will not POST with a mix of LR-dimms and R-dimms! I have an r730 and an extra 256GB of ram that does not make it happy.
I just have it here, on my desk. Taunting me.
Hi Craig,
Great question. This probably will not cause any issues with virtualization, as ultimately, the CPUs will use RAM that hasn’t been allocated yet. Admins decide how much of the CPU and memory to use, but the server should have no trouble selecting where to use it from.
Mike,
we have several Dell r430 of which we have purchased there, this is a general question about the R430, my question revolves around the fact the ram per cpu is different CPU1 has 8 dimms and CPU2 has 4 dimms, we are populating all slots with 32g chips so does this create some sort of issue in a virtualized environment considering how much ram per cpu as assigned to VM’s.
Hi Paul. Thanks for reaching out. We are still perfecting our design on these, and will be sure to let you know as soon as they are ready. Sorry for the wait but stay please tuned!
Hey Mike,
In Ny,
Do you sell those blue clips for raid card on the funky raid design PE720 Dell server?
How much if you do. Let me know if you can sell those to us.
TY
Paul
Chances are, when you’re building a server, you’re on a very specific mission. Whether you’re looking to store files, hosting a game server, or trying to enter the HomeLab Hall of Fame, you know what you want your server to (ideally) do. In this blogpost, we’ll talk through 6 different types of servers, go over what to use each of them for, and explain in depth how their configurations differ.
To the techmikeny.com webmaster, Your posts are always informative and well-explained.
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