Yeah, there is a line of units that has a PCI slot that then requires a riser card in order to be able to use it. The problem is that those units, from what I’ve seen, tend to cost at least twice as much as the M910Q/M710Q. Even the M920Q/M720Q are significantly more expensive. Not to mention, a bit more difficult to get hold of.

IMHO, once you’re talking about dropping $300-$350 on one of these models with the riser card, you really have to think hard about whether it’s worth it for 6th/7th generation Core i5 processors. Especially if you’re looking at a cluster of three. It seems highly probable that you could get something with an 11th/12th generation processor and multiple or 2.5GB ethernet ports for only a bit more, and you’d end up only needing two of them instead of three, and price might end up being a wash.

I am really, really curious to see how external USB 2.5GB or 5GB adapters would work. I’m getting the impression that they are a lot more reliable than they were even a few years ago, and might be a viable, cheap option.

All that being said, network speed hasn’t been an issue for me so far, and I’m not convinced that CEPH + HA, is a path I should be going down. Or a path that’s worth it for most self-hosters.

So far, the only thing that I’ve encountered that pushes the CPU on an ongoing basis is Frigate, and even that is performing well and not affecting other containers on the same host. But I’m still adding services to my cluster, so who knows.

I watched a whole bunch of videos about those and it totally looks like they would work electronically. But most of them wouldn’t fit in any of the ports on the back without modification and 3D printing magic. Some people left them “just hanging out”.