The Tech Journal

IOCREST IO-PCE585-5I PCIe 3.0 to 5 SATA 6Gb/s Card Review

Jul 082020

Need to add 5 SATA drives or SSDs to your system? The IO-PCE585-5I is a solid option!

The IO-PCE585-5I PCIe card adds 5 SATA ports to your system via a single PCIe x4 card using 2 PCIe lanes. Because the card uses PCIe 3.1a, this sounds like a perfect HBA to use to add SSD’s to your system.

This card can be used in workstations, DIY NAS (Network Attached Storage), and servers, however for the sake of this review, we’ll be installing it in a custom built FreeNAS system to see how the card performs and if it provides all the features and functionality we need.

Picture of an IO-PCE585-5I PCIe Card — IOCREST IO-PCE585-5I PCIe Card

A big thank you to IOCREST for shipping me out this card to review, they know I love storage products! 🙂

Use Cases

The IO-PCE585-5I card is strictly an HBA (a Host Bus Adapter). This card provides JBOD access to the disks so that each can be independently accessed by the computer or servers operating system.

Typically HBAs (or RAID cards in IT mode) are used for storage systems to provide direct access to disks, so that that the host operating system can perform software RAID, or deploy a special filesystem like ZFS on the disks.

The IOCREST IO-PCE585-5I is the perfect card to accomplish this task as it supports numerous different operating systems and provides JBOD access of disks to the host operating system.

In addition to the above, the IO-PCE585-5I provides 5 SATA 6Gb/s ports and uses PCIe 3 with 2 PCIe lanes, to provide a theoretical maximum throughput close to 2GB/s, making this card perfect for SSD use as well!

Need more drives or SSDs? With the PCIe 2x interface, simply just add more to your system!

While you could use this card with Windows software RAID, or Linux mdraid, we’ll be testing the card with FreeNAS, a NAS system built on FreeBSD.

First, how can you get this card?

Where to buy the IO-PCE585-5I

You can purchased the IO-PCE585-5I from:

IOCREST AliExpress Store – https://www.aliexpress.com/i/4000359673743.html
Amazon.com – https://www.amazon.com/IO-CREST-Non-RAID-Bifurcation-Controller/dp/B083GLR3WL/
Amazon.ca – https://www.amazon.ca/Internal-Non-Raid-Controller-Desktop-Bracket/dp/B07ST9CPND/
Syba USA – Through their network of resellers or distributors at https://www.sybausa.com/index.php?route=information/wheretobuy

This card is also marketed as the SI-PEX40139 and IO-PEX40139 Part Numbers.

IO-PCE585-5I Specifications

Let’s get in to the technical details and specs on the card.

According to the packaging, the IO-PCE585-5I features the following:

Supports up to two lanes over PCIe 3.0
Complies with PCI Express Base Specification Revision 3.1a.
Supports PCIe link layer power saving mode
Supports 5 SATA 6Gb/s ports
Supports command-based and FIS-based for Port Multipliers
Complies with SATA Specification Revision 3.2
Supports AHCI mode and IDE programming interface
Supports Native Command Queue (NCQ)
Supports SATA link power saving mode (partial and slumber)
Supports SATA plug-in detection capable
Supports drive power control and staggered spin-up
Supports SATA Partial / Slumber power management state
Supports SATA Port Multiplier

Whats included in the packaging?

1 × IO-PCE585-5I (IO-PEX40139) PCIe 3.0 card to 5 SATA 6Gb/s
1 × User Manual
5 × SATA Cables
1 x Low Profile Bracket
1 x Driver CD (not needed, but nice to have)

Unboxing, Installation, and Configuration

It comes in a very small and simple package.

Picture of the IO-PCE585-5I Retail Box — IO-PCE585-5I Retail Box

Opening the box, you’ll see the package contents.

Picture of IO-PCE585-5I Box Contents — IO-PCE585-5I Box Contents Unboxed

And finally the card. Please note that it comes with the full-height PCIe bracket installed. It also ships with the half-height bracket and can easily be replaced.

Installation in FreeNAS Server and cabling

We’ll be installing this card in to a computer system, in which we will then install the latest version of FreeNAS. The original plan is to connect the IO-PCE585-5I to a 5-Bay SATA Hotswap backplane/drive cage full of Seagate 1TB Barracuda Hard Drives for testing.

The card installed easily, however we ran in to an issue when running the cabling. The included SATA cables have right angel connectors on the end that connects to the drive, which stops us from being able to connect them to the backplane’s connectors. To overcome this we could either buy new cables, or directly connect to the disks. I chose the latter.

I installed the card in the system, and booted it up. The HBA’s BIOS was shown.

I then installed FreeNAS.

Inside of the FreeNAS UI the disks are all detected! I ran an “lspci” to see what the controller is listed as.

Screenshot of IO-PCE585-5I FreeNAS lspci — IO-PCE585-5I FreeNAS lspci

SATA controller: JMicron Technology Corp. Device 0585

I went ahead and created a ZFS striped pool, created a dataset, and got ready for testing.

Speedtest and benchmark

Originally I was planning on providing numerous benchmarks, however in every case I hit the speed limit of the hard disks connected to the controller. Ultimately this is great because the card is fast, but bad because I can’t pinpoint the exact performance numbers.

To get exact numbers, I may possibly write up another blog post in the future when I can connect some SSDs to test the controllers max speed. At this time I don’t have any immediately available.

One thing to note though is that when I installed the card in a system with PCIe 2.0 slots, the card didn’t run at the expected speed limitations of PCIe 2.0, but way under. For some reason I could not exceed 390MB/sec (reads or writes) when technically I should have been able to achieve close to 1GB/sec. I’m assuming this is due to performance loss with backwards compatibility with the slower PCIe standard. I would recommend using this with a motherboard that supports PCIe 3.0 or higher.

The card also has beautiful blue LED activity indicators to show I/O on each disk independently.

Animated GIF of IO-PCE585-5I LED Activity Indicators — IO-PCE585-5I LED Activity Indicators

After some thorough testing, the card proved to be stable and worked great!

Additional Notes & Issues

Two additional pieces of information worth noting:

IO-PCE585-5I Chipset – The IO-PCE585-5I uses a JMicron JMB585 chipset. This chipset is known to work well and stable with FreeNAS.
Boot Support – Installing this card in different systems, I noticed that all of them allowed me to boot from the disks connected to the IO-PCE585-5I.

While this card is great, I would like to point out the following issues and problems I had that are worth mentioning:

SATA Cable Connectors – While it’s nice that this card ships with the SATA cables included, note that the end of the cable that connects to the drive is right-angled. In my situation, I couldn’t use these cables to connect to the 5 drive backplane because there wasn’t clearance for the connector. You can always purchase other cables to use.
Using card on PCIe 2.0 Motherboard – If you use this PCIe 3.0 card on a motherboard with PCIe 2.0 slots it will function, however you will experience a major performance decrease. This performance degradation will be larger than the bandwidth limitations of PCIe 2.0.

Conclusion

This card is a great option to add 5 hard disks or solid state drives to your FreeNAS storage system, or computer for that matter! It’s fast, stable, and inexpensive.

I would definitely recommend the IOCREST IO-PCE585-5I.

Hosted Desktop Infrastructure (HDI) vs Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

Business, End User Computing, HDI, Moonshot, Omnissa Horizon, VDI No Responses »

Jul 072020

Picture of a business office with cubicles

In the ever-evolving world of IT and End User Computing (EUC), new technologies and solutions are constantly being developed to decrease costs, improve functionality, and help the business’ bottom line. In this pursuit, as far as end user computing goes, two technologies have emerged: Hosted Desktop Infrastructure (HDI), and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). In this post I hope to explain the differences and compare the technologies.

We’re at a point where due to the low cost of backend server computing, performance, and storage, it doesn’t make sense to waste end user hardware and resources. By deploying thin clients, zero clients, or software clients, we can reduce the cost per user for workstations or desktop computers, and consolidate these on the backend side of things. By moving moving EUC to the data center (or server room), we can reduce power requirements, reduce hardware and licensing costs, and take advantage of some cool technologies thanks to the use of virtualization and/or Storage (SANs), snapshots, fancy provisioning, backup and disaster recovery, and others.

See below for the video, or read on for the blog post!

And it doesn’t stop there, utilizing these technologies minimizes the resources required and spent on managing, monitoring, and supporting end user computing. For businesses this is a significant reduction in costs, as well as downtime.

What is Hosted Desktop Infrastructure (HDI) and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

Many IT professionals still don’t fully understand the difference between HDI and VDI, but it’s as sample as this: Hosted Desktop Infrastructure runs natively on the bare metal (whether it’s a server, or SoC) and is controlled and provided by a provisioning server or connection broker, whereas Virtual Desktop Infrastructure virtualizes (like you’re accustomed to with servers) the desktops in a virtual environment and is controlled and provided via hypervisors running on the physical hardware.

Hosted Desktop Infrastructure (HDI)

As mentioned above, Hosted Desktop Infrastructure hosts the End User Computing sessions on bare metal hardware in your datacenter (on servers). A connection broker handles the connections from the thin clients, zero clients, or software clients to the bare metal allowing the end user to see the video display, and interact with the workstation instance via keyboard and mouse.

Pros:

Remote Access capabilities
Reduction in EUC hardware and cost-savings
Simplifies IT Management and Support
Reduces downtime
Added redundancy
Runs on bare metal hardware
Resources are dedicated and not shared, the user has full access to the hardware the instance runs on (CPU, Memory, GPU, etc)
Easily provide accelerated graphics to EUC instances without additional costs
Reduction in licensing as virtualization products don’t need to be used

Cons:

Limited instance count to possible instances on hardware
Scaling out requires immediate purchase of hardware
Some virtualization features are not available since this solution doesn’t use virtualization
Additional backup strategy may need to be implemented separate from your virtualized infrastructure

Example:

If you require dedicated resources for end users and want to be as cost-effective as possible, HDI is a great candidate.

An example HDI deployment would utilize HPE Moonshot which is one of the main uses for HPE Moonshot 1500 chassis. HPE Moonshot allows you to provision up to 180 OS instances for each HPE Moonshot 1500 chassis.

More information on the HPE Moonshot (and HPE Edgeline EL4000 Converged Edge System) can be found here: https://www.stephenwagner.com/2018/08/22/hpe-moonshot-the-absolute-definition-of-high-density-software-defined-infrastructure/

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure virtualizes the end user operating system instances exactly how you virtualize your server infrastructure. In VMware environments, VMware Horizon View can provision, manage, and maintain the end user computing environments (virtual machines) to dynamically assign, distribute, manage, and broker sessions for users. The software product handles the connections and interaction between the virtualized workstation instances and the thin client, zero client, or software client.

Pros:

Remote Access capabilities
Reduction in EUC hardware and cost-savings
Simplifies IT Management and Support
Reduces downtime
Added redundancy
Runs as a virtual machine
Shared resources (you don’t waste hardware or resources as end users share the resources)
Easy to scale out (add more backend infrastructure as required, don’t need to “halt” scaling while waiting for equipment)
Can over-commit (over-provision)
Backup strategy is consistent with your virtualized infrastructure
Capabilities such as VMware DRS, VMware HA

Cons:

Resources are not dedicated and are shared, users share the server resources (CPU, Memory, GPU, etc)
Extra licensing may be required
Extra licensing required for virtual accelerated graphics (GPU)

Example:

If you want to share a pool of resources, require high availability, and/or have dynamic requirements then virtualization would be the way to go. You can over commit resources while expanding and growing your environment without any discontinuation of services. With virtualization you also have access to technologies such as DRS, HA, and special Backup and DR capabilities.

An example use case of VMware Horizon View and VDI can be found at: https://www.digitallyaccurate.com/blog/2018/01/23/vdi-use-case-scenario-machine-shops/

Conclusion

Both technologies are great and have their own use cases depending on your business requirements. Make sure you research and weigh each of the options if you’re considering either technologies. Both are amazing technologies which will compliment and enhance your IT strategy.

Ubiquiti UniFi US-8 Gigabit Switch

Ubiquiti, UniFi 3 Responses »

Jun 202020

Well, it was about time… I just purchased two Ubiquiti UniFi US-8 Gigabit Switches to replace a couple of aged Linksys Routers and Switches.

Picture of 2 Ubiquiti UniFi US-8 Switches — Ubiquiti UniFi US-8 Switch

I’ll be outlining why I purchased these, how they are setup, my impressions, and review.

Make sure you check out the video review below, and read the entire written review below as well!

Ubiquiti UniFi US-8 Gigabit Switch Review Video

Now on to the written review…

The back story

Yes, you read the first paragraph correctly, I’m replacing wireless routers with the UniFi US 8 Port switch.

While my core infrastructure in my server room is all Ubiquiti UniFi, I still have a few routers/switches deployed around the house to act as “VLAN breakout boxes“. These are Linksys wireless routers that I have hacked and installed OpenWRT on to act as switches for VLAN trunks and also provide native access to VLANs.

Originally these were working fine (minus the ability to manage them from the UniFi controller), but as time went on the hardware started to fail. I also wanted to fully migrate to an end-to-end UniFi Switching solution.

The goal

In the end, I want to replace all these 3rd party switches and deploy UniFi switches to provide switching with the VLAN trunks and provide native access to VLANs. I also want to be able to manage these all from the UniFi Controller I’m running on a Linux virtual machine.

To meet this goal, I purchased 2 of the Ubiquiti UniFi US-8, 8 port Gigabit manageable switches.

Ubiquiti UniFi US-8 Switch

So I placed an order through distribution for 2 of these switches.

As with all UniFi product, I was very impressed with the packaging.

Unboxing a Ubiquiti UniFi US-8 Switch — Ubiquiti UniFi US-8 Switch Unboxing

And here is the entire package unboxed.

A Ubiquiti UniFi US-8 Switch unboxed — Ubiquiti UniFi US-8 Switch Unboxed

Another good looking UniFi Switch!

Specs

The UniFi Switch 8 is available in two variants, the non-PoE and PoE version.

Part#: US-8	Part#: US-8-60W
8Gbps of Non-Blocking Throughput	8Gbps of Non-Blocking Throughput
16Gbps Switching Capacity	16Gbps Switching Capacity
12W Power Consumption	12W Power Consumption
Powered by PoE (Port 1) or AC/DC Power Adapter	Powered by AC/DC Power Adapter
48V PoE Passthrough on Port 8 (Powered by PoE passthrough from Port 1, or DC Power Adapter)	4 Auto-Sensing 802.3af PoE Ports (Ports 5-8)

UniFi Controller Adoption

After plugging in the two switches, they instantly appeared in the UniFi controller and required a firmware update to adopt.

Adoption was easy, and I was ready to configure the devices! Click on the images to view the screenshots.

Screenshot of Ubiquiti UniFi US-8 Adopted on UniFi Controller — Ubiquiti UniFi US-8 Adopted on UniFi Controller

Configuration and Setup

I went ahead and configured the management VLANs, along with the required VLAN and switch port profiles on the applicable ports.

One of these switches were going in my furnace room which has a direct link (VLAN trunk) from my server room. The other switch is going on my office desk, which will connect back to the furnace room (VLAN trunk). The switch on my desk will provide native access to one of my main VLANs.

I also planed on powering a UniFi nanoHD on my main floor with the PoE passthrough port, so I also enabled that on the switch residing in my furnace room.

Configuration was easy and took minutes. I then installed the switches physically in their designated place.

Screenshot of Ubiquiti UniFi US-8 Adopted and Configured on UniFi Controller — Ubiquiti UniFi US-8 Adopted and Configured on UniFi Controller

One things I want to note that I found really handy was the ability to restart and reset PoE devices via the UniFi Controller web interface. I’ve never had to reset any of my nanoHDs, but it’s handy to know I have the ability.

Everything worked perfectly once the switches were configured, setup, and implemented.

Overall Review

These are great little switches, however the price point can be a bit much when compared to the new UniFi USW-Flex-Mini switches. I’d still highly recommend this switch, especially if you have an end-to-end UniFi setup.

Use Cases:

Small Network Switch
Patch Panel Switch
Desktop Switch to connect to core switches
Network switch to power Wireless Access Points

What I liked the most:

Easy to setup
Visually attractive hardware
Uniform management with other UniFi devices
No fan, silent running
PoE Passthrough even on the Non-PoE version

What could be improved:

Price

Additional Resources and Blog Posts:

Manufacturer Product Links

Ubiquiti UniFi Switch US-8

Technology and Sport, with the Snapchat Spectacles

Fitness, Hiking, Life No Responses »

Jun 172020

One thing I love doing is mixing technology with sport.

In my free time I’m often hiking, cycling, running, or working out. I regularly use technology to supplement and track my activities. It helps to record, remember, track, and compete with myself.

I use a combo of hardware and software to do so, including watches, phones, software, etc but today I wanted to put emphasis on the Snapchat Spectacles.

The Snapchat Spectacles

Picture of Snapchat Spectacles and Charging Case — Snapchat Spectacles

I’ve had a pair of the 1st generation Snapchat Spectacles since they were released (I had to use my US shipping address to bring them over to Canada). Over the years I’ve used them to collect videos and haven’t really done much with them, with the exception of sending snaps to friends.

Thankfully I save everything I record and as of the past year, incorporating my new hobby with video, I’ve been able to use some of the old footage to generate some AMAZING videos!

See below for a video I put together of 3 beautiful mountain summits I hiked in one month, first person from the Snapchat Spectacles.

https://youtu.be/KSH0GFDUyQs

Snapchat Spectacles: 3 Mountain Summits in 31 Days

If you keep reading through to the end of the post there’s another video.

First person view

As you can see, even the first version of the Snapchat Spectacles generates some beautiful HD video, providing a first person view of the wearers field of vision.

You might say it’s similar to wearing a GoPro, but what I like about the Spectacles is that the camera is mounted beside your eyes, which makes the video capture that much more personal.

My wishlist

What I’d really like is the ability to continuously record HD video non-stop and even possibly record to my mobile device. Even if this couldn’t be accomplished wirelessly and required a wire to my mobile device, I would still be using it all the time.

Another thing that would be nice would be more size options, as the first generation are way too small for my head, LOL! 🙂

Conlusion

Tech is awesome, and I love using tech like this to share personal experiences!

Snapchat Spectacles: Hiking Grotto Mountain September 2017

Snapchat, if you’re listening, I’d love to help with the design of future versions of the Snapchat Spectacles…

Going 10Gig with the Ubiquiti UniFi US-16-XG Switch – Review

Ubiquiti, UniFi 7 Responses »

Jun 152020

We all love speed, whether it’s our internet connection or our home network. And as our internet speeds approach gigabits per second, it’s about time our networks hit 10Gb per second…

High speed networking, particularly 10Gig network is becoming more cost-effective day by day, and with vendors releasing affordable switches, there hasn’t been a better time to upgrade.

Today we’re going 10Gig with the Ubiquiti UniFi US-16-XG switch.

Picture of a Ubiquiti UniFi US-16-XG Switch retail box — Ubiquiti UniFi US-16-XG Switch Box shot

I’ll be discussing my configuration and setup, why you should use this switch for your homelab and/or business, as well as providing a review on the equipment.

Make sure you check out the video below and read the entire post!

Going 10Gig with the Ubiquiti UniFi US-16-XG Network Switch

Let’s get to it!

The back story

Just like the backstory with my original Ubiquiti UniFi Review, I wanted to optimize my network, increase speeds, and remove bottlenecks.

Most of my servers have 10Gig network adapters (through 10GbaseT or SFP+ ports), and I wanted to upgrade my other servers. I always wanted the ability to add more uplinks to allow a single host/server to have redundant connections to my network.

Up until now, I had 2 hosts connected via my Ubiquiti UniFi US-48 switch via the SFP+ ports with a SFP+ to 10GbaseT module. Using both of the 10Gig ports disallows anymore 10Gig devices being connected. Also, the converter module adds latency.

The goal

Ultimately I wanted to implement a solution that included a new 10Gb network switch acting as a backbone for the network, with connections to my servers, storage, 10Gig devices, and secondary 1Gb switches.

While not needed, it would be nice to have access to both SFP+ connections, as well as 10GbaseT as I have devices that use both.

At the same time, I wanted something that would be easy to manage, affordable, and compatible with equipment from other vendors.

Picture of Ubiquiti UniFi 16 XG Switch with UDC-1 DAC SFP+ Cables — Ubiquiti UniFi 16 XG Switch with UDC-1 DAC SFP+ Cables

I chose the Ubiquiti UniFi US-16-XG Switch for the task, along with an assortment of cables.

Ubiquiti UniFi US-16-XG Switch

After already being extremely please with the Ubiquiti UniFi product line, I was happy to purchase a unit for internal use, as my company sells Ubiquiti products.

Receiving the product, I was very impressed with the packaging and shipping.

Picture of Ubiquiti UniFi US-16-XG Switch Unboxing and Package contents — Ubiquiti UniFi US-16-XG Switch Unboxing and Package contents

And here I present the Ubiquiti UniFi 16 XG Switch…

Picture of Ubiquiti UniFi US-16-XG Switch — Ubiquiti UniFi US-16-XG Switch

You’ll notice the trademark UniFi product design. On the front, the UniFi 16 XG switch has 12 x 10Gb SFP+ ports, along with 4 x 10GbaseT ports. All ports can be used at the same time as none are shared.

Picture of the backside of a Ubiquiti UniFi US-16-XG Switch — Ubiquiti UniFi US-16-XG Switch Backside

The backside of the switch has a console port, along with 2 fans, DC power input, and the AC power.

Overall, it’s a good looking unit. It has even better looking specs…

Specs

The UniFi 16 XG switch specifications:

12 x 10Gb SFP+ Ports
4 x 10GbaseT Ports
160 Gbps Total Non-Blocking Line Rate
1U Form Factor
Layer 2 Switching
Fully Managed via UniFi Controller

The SFP+ ports allow you to use a DAC (Direct Attach Cable) for connectivity, or fiber modules. You can also populate them with converters, such as the Ubiquiti 10GBASE-T SFP+ CopperModule.

Picture of the Ubiquiti UniFi 16 XG Switch Ports — Ubiquiti UniFi 16 XG Switch Ports

You can also attach 4 devices to the 10GbaseT ports.

UDC-3 “FiberCable” DAC

I also purchased 2 x Ubiquiti UDC-3 SFP+ DAC cables. These cables provide connectivity between 2 devices with DAC ports. These can be purchased in lengths of 1 meter, 2 meter, and 3 meters with the part numbers of UDC-1, UDC-2, and UDC-3 respectively.

10Gtek Cable DAC

To test compatibility and have cables from other vendors (in case of any future issues), I also purchased an assortment of 10Gtek SFP+ DAC cables. I specifically chose these as I wanted to have a couple of half meter cables to connect the switches with an aggregated LAG.

UniFi Controller Adoption

To get quickly up and running, I setup the US-16-XG on my workbench, plugged in a network cable in to one of the 10GbaseT ports, and powered it on.

Picture of Ubiquiti US-16-XG Initial Provisioning on workbench — Ubiquiti US-16-XG Initial Provisioning

Boot-up was quick and it appeared in the UniFi Controller immediately. It required a firmware update before being able to adopt it to the controller.

Screenshot of UniFi US-16-XG UniFi Controller Pre-adoption — UniFi US-16-XG UniFi Controller Pre-adoption

After a quick firmware update, I was able to adopt and configure the switch.

Screenshot of UniFi US-16-XG UniFi Configured — UniFi US-16-XG UniFi Configured

The device had a “Test date” of March 2020 on the box, and the UniFi controller reported it as a hardware revision 13.

Configuration and Setup

Implementing, configuration, and setup will be an ongoing process over the next few weeks as I add more storage, servers, and devices to the switch.

The main priority was to test cable compatibility, connect the US-16-XG to my US-48, test throughput, and put my servers directly on the new switch.

I decided to just go ahead and start hooking it up. I decided to do this live without shutting anything down. I went ahead and perfomed the following:

Put the US-16-XG on top of the US-48
Disconnect servers from SFP+ CopperModules on US-48 switch
Plug servers in to 10GbaseT ports on US-16-XG
Remove SFP+ to 10GbaseT CopperModule from US-48 SFP+ ports
Connect both switches with a SFP+ DAC cable

Picture of US-16-XG and US-48 Connected and Configured — US-16-XG and US-48 Connected and Configured

Performing these steps only took a few seconds and everything was up and running. One particular thing I’d like to note is that the port auto-negotiation time on the US-16-XG was extremely quick.

Taking a look at the UniFi Controller view of the US-16-XG, we see the following.

Screenshot of US-16-XG Configured and Online with UniFi Controller — US-16-XG Configured and Online with UniFi Controller

Everything is looking good! Ports auto-detected the correct speed, traffic was being passed, and all is good.

After running like this for a few days, I went ahead and tested the 10Gtek cables which worked perfectly.

To increase redundancy and throughput, I used 2 x 0.5-Meter 10Gtek SFP+ DAC cables and configured an aggregated LAG between the two switches which has also been working perfectly!

In the coming weeks I will be connecting more servers as well as my SAN, so keep checking back for updated posts.