Dell PowerEdge 2950, Broadcom integrated NICs and TOE

[Kahonu84]

Aloha,

We have three Dell PowerEdge 2950s running ESX 3.02. Each server has an integrated Broadcom BCM5708C NetExtreme II GigE dual-port NIC (and three Intel Pro dual-ports). We are in the beginning stages of upgrading to ESX Enterprise. We will be using a LeftHand iSCSI SAN. Our potential contractor is suggesting we use TOE to offload some of the iSCSI processing demands. As I read, the Broadcoms are TOE-able, but I am quite sure TOE is disabled as when we specced/ordered the server, you had to specifically request TOE be enabled. At the time, we had no reason to do so.

Question is - how would you enable TOE after the fact???

Mahalo,

Bill

[jhanekom]

I'm guessing it's just a BIOS setting - Dell is pretty good at making extra money by charging people small change for making things easier for them (don't have a problem with that practice - I think it's a great value-add to allow clients to customise BIOS defaults pre-delivery.)

Regardless, the ESX iSCSI initiator doesn't currently support TOE or jumbo frames, so you'll get no performance benefit out of it for that purpose. It may (or may not) change in future, but VMware have given no indication as to when this might take place.