Dell R430 Intel nic

[Vyper28]

Does anyone know if I can put a non-dell Intel i350-t2 into a poweredge r430? The cards look very similiar on eBay, but the dell is $200 and the oem Intel is $50. Just curious if anyone has tried?

 

[Markverhyden]

To my knowledge regular PCI, PCI-e, etc are universal. I've not done this with something like an R430. But I did swap out my wireless adapter on a D630 with another brand. No problem. Just had to load the drivers. But if you are using built in server tools you might have problems with reporting if they have specialized firmware.

 

[Vyper28]

I am most worried about form factor. I notice the plate is the same but the pcb is a bit thinner on the dell version. As this is rack mount and I have the pcie riser kit installed. I'm planning to remove the broadcom pos and install the intel card to resolve these network drops I'm having with my vm guest machines.

 

[marley1]

Broadcoms are fine

 

[Vyper28]

Broadcoms have known issues with Hyper-V guests. It's "patched" in some version of the drivers, but the results are still far from perfect. I've gone through several hours of dell support and troubleshooting, and they've admitted it's likely because of broadcoms drivers having issues. Hit up google and take a peek, there are dozens of people with the exact same issues, some have resolved it with different versions of the driver software, but most are still seeing issues with packet loss under load.

 

[marley1]

You need to Disable Virtual Machine Queue.

Issue resolved this is well known and a 5 second fix.

Intel NIC aftermarket fit in my R210 so don't think you will have issue

 

[Vyper28]

I have disabled VMQ, it helped, but did not resolve the issue. I went from network drops every 15 minutes, to every 2~ hours or so. Not good enough for me. Dell has already confirmed it's the NIC, and it's a known issue that affects some of these Dells with broadcoms using the specific driver file I am using (file not version). SOMETIMES VMQ resolves the issue, sometimes it does not. They refunded me the broadcom NIC already after they remoted in an confirmed it was the broadcom's fault. I have a fleet of 85 R430's in service currently, and about 15% of them have the same issue despite VMQ being disabled, I've always just ordered Dell nics, was only curious if the standard Intel one at 1/4 price would work for me going forward.