Hi everyone, I know this gets discussed a lot and I don't want to re-tread old ground, but I am in the process of specifying firewall hardware for 10Gbit and would like to check the rules-of-thumb I am using..
We would like to reach 1 Million pps, and would like to forward at least up-to the current ALTQ limit (~4Gbit) (we have to use queuing). We should be looking for ?; Single fastest CPU speed possible Hyper-threading disabled Turbo mode enabled (2 cores only, one for the kernel and one for user-land) Big L3 cache Unbuffered memory (buffering slower) Sandy Bridge or Sand Bridge EP (2011 socket has quad channel memory access) 1600MHz memory Intel X520-SR2 NIC I am currently looking at the Supermicro X10SLM-F mainboard ( http://shop.transtec.co.uk/GB/E/products/server/infrastructure_server.html?mod=prod&name=SI1180A304R). This is only Sandy Bridge (1155 socket, so dual channel memory access), but has fully unbuffered memory access (larger boards support 520GB RAM and so are buffered etc). Getting an E3-1280 v3 CPU (cannot afford the 1290 v3). And 1600MHz unbuffered ECC RAM Am I missing anything important, or is there some hardware combination that anyone has had some great success with for a reasonable price (~2,000 GBP)? Thanks for your time and I'm sorry for bringing this question up again, but hardware changes regularly and I greatly value the opinions of others on this list. Regards, Andy.
