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We are looking to upgrade our SAN from 1Gb copper to 10Gb, preferably with the option to use either copper or optical for flexibility on the switch side. I like the option of upgrading to 25G or 100G when we get around to upgrading our network infra but that's a future project.

We are looking at the Dell PowerVault ME5 chassis which can use either 10Gb 4- or 8-port fixed copper card (i.e., a typical server quad card) or 25Gb 4- or 8-port SFP28 card. The specs say the 25Gb card can use either the SFP28 optical for 10G/25G, SFP+ optical for 10G, or SFP+ DAC twinax for 10G copper.

I don't have free SFP cages on the switch side to use DAC. Since the contrller can take SFP+ modules, will it work with a 10G copper SFP+ module using regular rj45 connectors? I'm not aware of any technical incompatibilities that'd prevent me from doing this, but Dell doesn't publish any specs on the controller cards so I can't dig in to match things myself. I've mixed media and speeds in other platforms, but that was a while ago.

jma
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The Dell PowerVault ME5 Series Storage System Support Matrix lists some supported 10 GbE and 10/25 GbE modules, but all for 850 nm multi-mode fiber (10/25GBASE-SR). SFP28 and SFP+ DACs are also listed.

10GBASE-T requires extensive transcoding inside the SFP+ module and doesn't seem to be supported. You could try but even if they work there's no guarantee that they will after the next firmware update.

If there are no available switch ports but only up to four hosts to connect, you could connect them directly to the controller ports - just make sure you use non-overlapping IP subnets.

Zac67
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