Massive network bandwidth needed

[theorignalAMD Overclocker]

I have a project that I have been wanting to do for some time. I want to connect two computers with some network that will give me 200MB/sec one-way traffic speeds. It will be for offloading my ram drive images 4-10GB each. It will be coming from ram to the source speed is not a consideration. On the destination side, it will be going to a 12 disk 15K SCSI array, R1/0. Both computers have several pci-x/e slots so that will be okay. I had in mind just directly connecting three cat5e cables between them and seeing if I can figure out how to combind them, I forgot the technical term at the moment. Can I do that without a switch in the middle? I also have several fiber NICs that I can try any better chance at that? I kind of want to stick with copper because I have an Intel four port Gb NIC so that will save slots on the source computer. Ideas? Suggestions? Comments? Thanks.

 

[spidey07]

10 gig ethernet or 4 gig SAN.

 

[theorignalAMD Overclocker]

I cant afford $1K/NIC nor a 4Gb SAN NIC plus a 4Gb switch.

 

[Rilex]

How many spindles is your array going to be? RAID10 you said? Your array is going to determine the speed of the network you require. Also do not forget to factor in protocol overhead.

 

[theorignalAMD Overclocker]

On the destination side, it will be going to a 12 disk 15K SCSI array, R1/0.

 

[futuristicmonkey]

Two bonded (or trunked, etherchannel'd,...whatever the hell you feel like calling it today) 1Gb nic's should give you the bandwidth you need. 200MB/s = 1600Mb/s, so unless you have a massive overhead of more than 400Mb/s, you should be fine.

As for the implementation: that's gonna be fun. In the chance that you have OpenBSD running on both machines you should research OpenBSD trunking. If not, you will need to consider a capable switch.

 

[Rilex]

If you get Intel (or HP-branded) NICs, as well as many other major companies like 3Com, you can bond two identical NICs using their software with a variety of options (in the case of Intel/HP)...if you're using Windows 2000/2003.

 

[jlazzaro]

bonded NICs do nothing without bonded/etherchanneled ports.

 

[theorignalAMD Overclocker]

If they are directly connected, problem solved.

 

[azev]

even when the switch ports is etherchannel, if there are only one data stream going its not going to go above 1000Mbps. Correct me if I am wrong, but I think etherchannel is really still some method of load balancing traffic across ports. If there's only one flow of traffic, only one of the ports on the etherchannel will be used, hence the 1Gbs limit.