ISP Builds $1,200 Intel® Xeon® Server for 6WIND Border Router Software to Scale from 10 to 100 Gbps

One of 6WIND’s ISP customers, based in the US, experienced difficulties swapping out a 10G NIC in his aging Cisco Border Router that includes 5 x 10G NICs. So he decided to try 6WIND’s free Border Router software evaluation download to check if 6WIND Virtual Border Router software could offer a replacement to his hardware router.

Before downloading 6WIND’s Border Router software, he contacted us to see if we had a server hardware recommendation. We suggested a Dell R630 1U server with an Intel® Xeon® 8 core processor and 10G NICs to get started as many of our ISP Border Router customers use this server with positive results.

Our customer called several days later to report that he purchased the server we recommended and is ready to test. We were impressed with his speed, and the price he found online, so much that we’d like to share his purchase, in case it can help with your evaluation.

Here are the details for his Dell R630 that can scale from 10 to 100 Gbps when running 6WIND’s vRouter.

Dell PowerEdge R630 8-Bay 2.5″ 1U Server

146GB 15K SAS 2.5” 6Gbps Hard Disk Drive (Quantity: 2)
Dell 750W 80+ Power Supply (Quantity: 2)
16GB PC4-2133P Registered Server Memory RAM (Quantity: 4)
RAID Controller Card (Quantity: 1)
Intel® Xeon® E5-2640 v3 2.60GHz 8-Core LGA 2011/Socket R-3 Server Processor (Quantity: 2)
Dell 0C63DV Dual-Port 10GBe SFP + Dual-Port Gigabit RJ-45 (Quantity: 1)
Dell X520-DA2 Dual-Port 10GB SFP+ PCIe Card (Quantity: 3)

The entire server outlined above came to ~$1,200, including the 3 x dual 10G NICs. The additional dual 10G NIC is already built-in. One of the dual 10G NICs can be replaced with a dual 40G NIC for future expansion. In this case, the customer is already trying a replacement with an Intel® XL710Q-DA2. This would give 4 x 10G and 2 x 40G on the same server and allow scaling beyond 100G throughput.

Our customer shopped around online and purchased his server here. For customers who want to start evaluating 6WIND’s vRouter for Border Router use cases, we typically recommend an Intel Xeon server, v3 or higher, with 8 cores and 10G NICs to start. Here’s our list of minimum system requirements.

Within less than a week, our customer had a new server, ready to test. We hope this blog can help save you time and resources for your evaluation.

Register for your Virtual Border Router software evaluation download today. It’s obligation free, and you can immediately replace hardware with software on white box servers.