10Gbe sfp+ Cross Over Cable required? Is there such a thing?

Posted by dc-patos on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by dc-patos
Published on 2012-09-12T20:24:00Z Indexed on 2012/09/12 21:40 UTC
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To preface, this is my first experience with 10GBe networking and I have encountered an issue which research does not seem to document a solution for...

I have two servers (older DL580G5 and DL380G5), each with a HP NC522SFP 10Gbe dual sfp+ port adapter. I have purchased copper "passive" direct connect adapter cables (which look like twinax), which seem to work well when I connect them to the sfp+ ports on my Dell 5524 switch. However, if I directly connect the two servers with the same cable, the link doesn't come up. I am running WS2012 standard on each server. My intention is to use one of these servers as a home brew SAN and I would like to enable mutiple 10Gbe paths for iSCSI traffic.

My question(s):

Can I connect the two adapters to each other, such as I would with other less speedy generations of ethernet? If I can, do I require a crossover cable, or some type of other sfp+ cable solution to do this? My 10Gbe sfp+ switch ports are premium, but server to server connections are doable in small numbers for me and I would really like the multiple paths this would give me. Is there a simple solution?

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