Network Adapters

Speed and what it costs to use it. 10GbE moves ten times the data of Gigabit Ethernet, which matters for virtualisation hosts, backup traffic, shared storage and busy file servers. It also needs 10GbE switch ports and suitable cabling. For management networks and light workloads, Gigabit is usually enough, and multi-port Gigabit cards are a simple way to separate traffic.

Often, over short runs. Cat6A is the grade designed to carry 10GBASE-T over the full 100 metres. Cat6 carries it over shorter distances, commonly quoted as up to 55 metres, and Cat5e was not designed for it. For a new installation, use Cat6A. If your cabling is older, test the runs or ask the team to check.

They are vendor-specific network adapter formats. Dell network daughter cards and HPE FlexibleLOM adapters plug into a dedicated connector on the motherboard rather than a PCIe slot, so they add ports without using an expansion slot. The catch is that they only fit servers built for that format, so a standard PCIe card is the more flexible choice when moving between servers.

A standard PCIe network card generally works in another vendor's server if the operating system has drivers for its chipset. Some servers run their fans faster when they detect a card they do not recognise, and the vendor's management tools may not report on it. Vendor-specific daughter cards only fit their own platform. Send the server model and the team will advise.

It depends on how much you separate traffic. A common approach keeps management, virtual machine traffic, storage and live migration on separate ports or VLANs, with each pair of ports teamed for redundancy. Small hosts can combine roles on two fast ports. Tell the team your hypervisor, storage type and switch layout and they will suggest a card and port count.