topic Re: NIC Expansion for FAS2554? in ONTAP Hardware

NIC Expansion for FAS2554?

sheneman — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 11:14:34 GMT

We have a new use case for our dual-controller FAS 2554 that would ideally require additional 10Gb physical network interfaces.

I assume the answer is no, but I thought I would ask: are there network expansion cards to add 2 or 4 new physical ports to an existing dual-controller FAS 2554?

Cheers,

-Luke

Re: NIC Expansion for FAS2554?

pedro_rocha — Wed, 01 Apr 2020 19:06:16 GMT

Hi Luke,

4 UTA2 ports is all you got per FAS2554 controller. It does not accept expansions, it does not have an expansion slot.

Regards,

Pedro

Re: NIC Expansion for FAS2554?

SpindleNinja — Wed, 01 Apr 2020 20:09:48 GMT

Correct in that the answer is no. But why? 4x10G for a 2554 seems... excessive.

Re: NIC Expansion for FAS2554?

paul_stejskal — Thu, 02 Apr 2020 14:31:24 GMT

10Gb is more than enough because of the size of the platform.

Re: NIC Expansion for FAS2554?

zeitlins — Thu, 02 Apr 2020 21:46:06 GMT

Hi could you please explain the use case? and how are the existing ports used?

Stefan

Re: NIC Expansion for FAS2554?

sheneman — Tue, 28 Apr 2020 21:42:47 GMT

Thanks. We're working on an "experimental" pilot project where we are extending 3 distinct campus networks from three different universities together in one shared datacenter. We are looking at using an existing dual-node NetApp FAS 2554 within that datacenter as a way to provide "seamless" access to common research data. There are exceptionally paranoid security constraints by all 3 campuses to prevent any network bridging in this configuration by having any common intermediate switches, etc. so we were exploring the possibility of directly connecting all three campus networks to the NetApp without going through an intermediate switch. This would involve 3 PIFs, 3LIFs on a common SVM. It would not be an HA configuration.

Re: NIC Expansion for FAS2554?

paul_stejskal — Tue, 28 Apr 2020 22:26:30 GMT

Given the low throughput capabilities of the 2554, you could use the Gigabit ports. You also could have indirect traffic and have one LIF on one node and two on the other. Definitely not recommended/best practice, but technically possible.