Sun Oracle 10/25GbE SFP28 PCIe 3.0 x8 Network Interface Card (NIC)

Sun P/N: 7339763 | Broadcom P/N: BCM957314A3143CC

The Sun Oracle 7339763 is a high-performance, enterprise-grade network adapter designed for modern cloud infrastructure and high-density virtualized environments. Manufactured by Broadcom (specifically the NetXtreme-E Series), this card provides a massive jump in bandwidth over legacy 10GbE solutions. It is a "converged" adapter, meaning it can handle both standard network traffic and storage traffic simultaneously, making it a backbone component for Oracle SPARC and x86 servers.

📊 Technical Specifications

• Ports: 🔌 2 x SFP28 Ports (Small Form-factor Pluggable 28)

• Speed: 🏎️ 25 Gbps / 10 Gbps / 1 Gbps (Auto-negotiation)

• Interface: ⚡ PCIe 3.0 x8

• Controller: 🧠 Broadcom BCM57314

• Form Factor: 📏 Low Profile (Half-Height/Half-Length)

• Virtualization: 🌐 SR-IOV support (Up to 128 Virtual Functions)

• Power Draw: 🔋 ~9.1W (Typical)

• Protocol Support: 📑 RoCE v1/v2, iSCSI, Jumbo Frames (9.6 KB), VLAN tags

✅ Product Overview

• 25GbE Standard: Designed to provide 2.5x the bandwidth of 10GbE while using the same physical cabling infrastructure (LC fiber or Twinax DAC). This makes it the "sweet spot" for upgrading data centers without a complete overhaul.

• RoCE (RDMA over Converged Ethernet): This is the card’s "superpower." It allows for Remote Direct Memory Access, which lets data move from one server's memory to another without involving either server's CPU. This dramatically reduces latency and CPU overhead for clustered applications.

• Advanced Virtualization: With support for up to 128 Virtual Functions (VFs) and SR-IOV, this card is built to host a high density of Virtual Machines (VMs). Each VM can be given "near-native" I/O performance as if it were talking directly to the hardware.

• Converged Traffic: Supports Network Overlay technologies like VXLAN, NVGRE, and Geneve. This allows the physical network to be virtualized into secure, isolated L2 networks within a data center.

📦 Compatibility & Use Case

• Target Systems:

  • Oracle Sun Servers: Native support for Oracle Server X-series and SPARC T-series.

  • Enterprise Clouds: Compatible with standard x86 servers (Dell, HPE, Lenovo) with PCIe 3.0 slots.

  • Storage Arrays: Ideal for high-speed connectivity to All-Flash storage arrays.

• Ideal Workloads:

  • Clustered Databases: Specifically tuned for Oracle RAC (Real Application Clusters).

  • High-Frequency Trading (HFT): Low-latency RoCE makes it suitable for time-sensitive financial transactions.

  • Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI): Perfect for software-defined storage like vSAN or Nutanix.

🛠️ Installation Note

💡 Transceiver Selection: Because this uses SFP28 ports, you must use SFP28 transceivers for 25Gb speeds. While it is physically compatible with older SFP+ (10Gb) modules, you will be limited to 10Gb speeds. For 25Gb, ensure your cables or transceivers are rated for 25GBASE-SR or 25GBASE-LR.

💡 Operating Systems: As an Oracle-validated part, it has native "plug-and-play" drivers for Oracle Solaris, Oracle Linux, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It is also fully compatible with Windows Server and VMware ESXi, though you may need to download the latest Broadcom NetXtreme-E drivers.

The Sun Oracle 7339763 is a professional-grade networking engine. If you're looking to eliminate network bottlenecks in a virtualized or clustered environment, this Broadcom-powered adapter is one of the most reliable ways to do it.