iSCSI offload is probably relatively expensive for a 1Gbit NIC, which is a possible reason why Dell doesn't offer it (anymore (I remember older Dell Broadcom NICs offering it)). Adding $50 to a $100 (1Gbit dual port) NIC solution is a pretty big increase, but adding $50 to a $500 (10Gbit dual port) NIC solution is a lot less impacting. Dell often seems to look at it that way. Also; iSCSI offload only seems to be useful in a few situations; boot-from-SAN and if you want to put a swapfile on a SAN volume. Both of these have some major drawbacks when there are SAN connectivity issues (very much harder to troubleshoot). Adding iSCSI offload to save CPU power, in my opinion, is hardly worth it as the CPU usage by the Broadcom or Intel NIC driver is very low on modern servers compared to the total processing power of the server. If you really want to offload iSCSI, I'd suggest considering a Qlogic solution, or go with a 10Gbit solution.
Hello this is my first post so please excuse me if I violate any forum etiquette. I would like some advice on the PE 12G rack range NIC.Does anybody of any 1Gb quad port NIC that has TOE? It seems that the standard Broadcome 5720/5719 which comes with the say the R420 - R620 has only TSO and no TOE. And none of the cards have 1Gb iSCSI offload. However Cisco servers have a NIC called Broadcom 5709 which is 1G and has TOE.Only the 10GB NIC/CNA has full TOE/iSCSI offload. Please advice :)Regards,Hosni
Advice on iSCSI NIC