Help with 10Gb NICs, Could someone explain the difference?

[Drewby]

I have a ML350p Gen8 v2, and the Option parts list the following SFP adapters:

593717-B21 HPE NC523SFP 10Gb 2-port Server Adapter
614203-B21 HPE NC552SFP 10Gb 2-port Ethernet Server Adapter
652503-B21 HPE Ethernet 10Gb 2-port 530SFP Adapter 652503-B21
665249-B21 HPE Ethernet 10Gb 2-port 560SFP+ Adapter

Could someone simply or generally explain the differeces between these 4 choices.

Also, if I am ESXI 7.0u3 (HPE-Custom-AddOn_703.0.0.10.9.0-11 (Hewlett Packard Enterprise), are any of these adapters supported, and If i am running 4 VM's and using 2 processors, should I have 2 cards installed?  Because PCI slots 1-4 are connected to Processor 1 and 5-9 are connected to Processor 2.

[msobers22]

Hello,

The main difference in the NICs is the chipset. That will affect driver availabilty and compatibility with ESXi 7.

HP Ethernet 10Gb 2-port 530SFP Adapter (652503-B21) has a Marvel (Qlogic) chipset - Driver support for ESXi 7 

HP Ethernet 10Gb 2-port 560SFP+ Adapter (665249-B21) - Intel chipset - Driver support for ESXi 7

HPE NC523SFP 10Gb 2-port Server Adapter (593717-B21) - Emulex chipset - NO driver support for ESXi 7

HPE NC552SFP 10Gb 2-port Ethernet Server Adapter (614203-B21) - Emulex chipset - NO driver support for ESXi 7

Now as far as if you need one NIC or two it depends. Is this a stand-alone server or will it be in a cluster? What type of vSwitch are you planning to use.  Is this production or a lab? You could handle all the traffic need with one card. Are you using iSCSI storage for your datastore? If that is case you might want to separate the storage traffic using a one of the ports. 

Hope this helps. 

[Drewby]

@msobers22 

Thank You for your input. There are 5 servers total. 2-ML350p G8 v2and 3-DL160 G6. The ML350p are twins, one is primary and the other is a replication, There a multiple VMs running on the server, and if the server goes down, the replica automatically takes over.  Currently the datastore is on the ML350p also.  The DL160's are the old servers and were converted to VM's and moved to the ML350p. The DL160 will eventually be FreeNAS servers to store any other files but especially the backup images of all of the workstations, vm's and servers. We have Dell PowerConnect 6248 and 6224 Level 3 switches (4 in total) Everything is connected using ipv4 and using CAT 5e and 6 currently at 1G, and the switches are connected at 10G using SFP+ 10G transcievers and fiber. I was trying to attach the servers at 10g to the switches using the rear SFP+ 10G ports, but all the servers lack 10G or SFP/SFP+ ports.  When I look up parts in the OPTION PARTS, there are those multiple 10G SFP cards, and I have not enough technical knowledge to decipher the differences between them or know exactly what I need and dont need.