GLOTRENDS ST7286 2-Port 10Gb SFP+ Ethernet Network Card with Mellanox ConnectX-3 Controller, PCIe 3.0 X8 Interface, RDMA(RoCE), Not Infiniband

I got this to try to connect to one of my rackmount servers in my homelab from my desktop. My server has a built in SFP port but I have just been using 1G ethernet up until this point and while that is fast, this thing is insane transfer speeds. It makes doing backups on my desktop much easier as the backup gets sent so much faster to the server. Eventually I would like to upgrade my house to at least 10g but that's a problem for future me. As far as the card's compatibility, I can't speak on other operating systems, but it installed plug-and-play on my Windows 11 system. Overall for a dual port 25gb SFP card, this is a great value for the price.

The card worked mostly well for me. I was able to achieve 25Gb speed with both switched and direct connections. Connection is also mostly stable as a 24/7 application. However, I did experience some stability issue when passing the card (from SMC X11 SSL board) to a Truenas 25 VM on proxmox 9 when iscsi service was enabled. The VM would keep restarting. However, when using the card on SMC X8 board running proxmox 9 without pci passthrough, everything runs very stable. Overall, seems to be a good value for the money for home lab or small business setups.

I've been running 10GbE networks in my lab for about a year-and-a-half, which is a very noticeable upgrade from the more common 1, 2.5, and even 5 GbE speeds in non-enterprise gear. 25GbE is now "entry level" for enterprise networks, and popular because it's easily split from 100 GbE ports. With many "AI" applications demanding higher bandwidth, 400 GbE and even 800 GbE are replacing 100 GbE in high-end and mid-tier applications, and as NVMe storage becomes the normal, systems can increasingly take advantage of 25 GbE connections even for lower-end workstations and edge servers. I tested this card as a NIC in a supermicro storage server, serving 48 U.2 NVMe drives, which can easily saturate even multiple 10GbE connections. With 1 card and bonded ports, I had a clean 50 GbE connection to my switch, and running even multiple file connections to multiple servers for backup the speed increase was noticeable. This card won't be for your average desktop system, or even a higher end NAS setup, but if you can take advantage of it, it's a now affordable upgrade to existing 10GbE networks. The ConnectX4 chipset is still serious business, and in a virtualized environment like Proxmox, SRIOV means that each VM can "See" the hardware more directly, reducing latency and server load - important as network speeds increase and I/O ops become scarce. If you have the workload, the network, and a little patience (It's not drop-in easy), this could be the next step in your lab or small business for some serious I/O power.

After upgrading my desktop to Windows 11 24H2, this card connected instantly. WiFi 7 speeds are excellent with low latency, and the included antenna extension helps with placement. Just note it’s not compatible with AMD motherboards, so check first.

I'm slowly upgrading my home network from 10Gbps/40Gbps to 25Gbps/100Gbps. Installing this in my machine was a piece of cake. I didn't need to install any drivers, and Proxmox recognized the card immediately. It's backwards compatible with 10GBps SFP+ modules, so is a great way to incrementally upgrade your network; for example. As I did, you can directly replace a 10Gbps card and reuse the same SFP+ modules/cables. It will continue to function as a 10Gbps card until you can get SFP28 modules/cables and you have other 25Gbps hosts or switches to connect to. After putting this in one of my machines (replacing a single-port 10Gbps NIC), once I pointed the interface name at the new MAC address, everything in Proxmox functioned exactly as before. After that simple replacement, I connected the second port to my switch via DAC, and added the interface in Proxmox. That too worked exactly as expected, and I got the increased bandwidth I expected. There's not a lot to say. If you need a 25Gbps NIC, this is a good choice, and I haven't had any issues with it so far.

Installed one of these in my NAS to connect it to my workstation PC, which already had a compatible NIC. Both systems are running Windows and it recognized the card immediately—no driver headaches, just plug and go. Since everything's in close proximity, I’m currently using a single port with a 3-meter 25G SFP28 DAC cable (came with the workstation PC NIC). In testing file transfers between NVMe drives across both machines, I consistently saw speeds over 2.1GB/s (~17Gbps) without doing any network tuning. The drives themselves could probably go a bit faster, but this setup more than meets my current needs. Once I expand my NAS storage, I’ll likely take advantage of the second port for link aggregation—but even as-is, it feels solidly futureproof for my use case. If you're wiring this up, you’ll need either a 25G SFP28/SFP+ Direct Attach Cable (DAC)—which is plug-and-play and doesn’t require separate modules—or a pair of SFP28/SFP+ transceivers plus a compatible fiber optic cable. If you’d rather go the all-in-one route, a 25G AOC (Active Optical Cable) works too—they come with the modules built in. Whatever option you go with, once it’s hooked up, it just works. Fast speeds, rock-solid stability, and no hiccups during sustained transfers. All in all, a reasonably cost-effective upgrade for a faster home or office network. --- For anyone interested, the exact product I purchased was listed as: GLOTRENDS ST7369 2-Port 25Gb SFP28 Server Network Card with Mellanox ConnectX-4 Controller, PCIe 3.0 X8 Interface, Support RDMA (RoCE v2), Not Infiniband (2port 25Gb SFP28, RDMA (RoCE v2)) The ASIN for the version I received was: B0DS12MWS2