10Gb SFP+ NIC options for HP DL360 running XCP-NG

I am virtualizing our servers and thanks to Tom’s videos, I’ve chosen to go with XCP-NG. I will have (2) DL360 G9 servers connected to a HP 5412 switch. The switch will have SFP+ modules for connectivity. What 10GbE SFP+ NIC’s are known to work well with the DL360 and XCP-NG? Note - I will have multiple vlans that will utilize this. Thanks.

I don’t ever use HP servers, but the Intel cards have always worked well such as the X520-DA2
http://hcl.xenserver.org/networkadapters/?networkadaptersupport__version=17&vendor=2&speeds=2

I appreciate the response. Have you tested any 10Gtek products? I was looking at this, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LZRSQM9/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_glt_fabc_94W1CB4X8XDQERKEHZ0H?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

Thoughts?

Nope, I have not tried them. And my “Thoughts” are why pay more for the 10GTek when you can get the Intel for less on ebay.

@Tech_Guy44
Have been using SolarFlare NICs with no issues anywhere. Have put them into my XCP-ng servers and other stuff too. They are inexpensive, high quality, high performance, reliable and there seems to be decent second hand market. Currently have them in my production business servers, including (2) Dell PowerEdge R720’s, an old R710 and even put them into an Optiplex 3010/3020 without issues. One of the R720s is my TrueNAS core (FreeBSD), the other is my XCP-ng (CentOS Linux) and the old R710 has run Windows 2019, FreeBSD, Debian for testing various projects at the time then currently XCP-ng. The Optiplex systems were all running Debian 10.

I seem to remember during my research before buying the NICs that SolarFlare made HP branded NICs too. Maybe check ServeTheHome and the TrueNAS forums. Also I seem to recall SolarFlare NICs were the top choice for large tech companies like Google, FaceBook and others.

Citrix Xen listed them as supported devices and that’s good because XCP-ng is derived from Citrix Xen. Seem to recall seeing them in our data centers my past-life as an Sr. IT enterprise admin for my company wide Citrix farm too. Those SolarFlare things just work and they seem to work with everything I throw at them.

Current production config has a mix of new-old stock, used and new SFP+ modules for DAC and Fiber from 10Gtek, Cisco, Dell and even some no-name stuff. My two primary switches are Unifi 48s, the isolated and lab swiches are Netgear. All of it works.

Note that VLAN capability is more about the switches and routing equipment then the cabling. Keep in mind that not even 10 yrs ago 10 Gb connectivity was almost the exclusive realm of Enterprise connectivity, so as a result the feature set of that class of equipment should virtually always support “advanced” features like VLAN.

Good luck, keep us posted on your builds