1NN8T Dell Mellanox ConnectX-4 LX 25GbE SFP28 Dual Port Daughter Card

Overview of the Dual Port Daughter Card

The 1NN8T Dell Mellanox ConnectX-4 LX 25GbE SFP28 Dual Port Daughter Card is a high-performance network interface solution engineered for enterprise servers, hyperscale environments, cloud computing platforms, and software-defined data centers requiring advanced Ethernet connectivity. Designed specifically for compatibility with Dell PowerEdge server platforms, this daughter card integrates Mellanox ConnectX-4 LX controller technology to deliver exceptional throughput, ultra-low latency, and reliable connectivity for demanding networking workloads.

General Information

• Brand: Dell 
• Part Number: 1NN8T
• Product Type: Network Adapter

Key Features of Adapter

• Ports: Dual-Port
• Data Transfer Rate: 25gbe
• Protocol: Ethernet
• Device Type : Network Adapter
• Form Factor : Daughter Card
• TCP segmentation offload (TSO)
• Large receive offload (LRO)
• Checksum offloading
• VXLAN and NVGRE encapsulation offload
• Geneve tunneling support
• RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE)
• Connectors: Two Small Form Factor Pluggable 28 Transceiver Slots

Compatibility

• Dell PowerEdge R640
• Dell PowerEdge R740
• Dell PowerEdge R740xd
• Dell PowerEdge R940
• Dell PowerEdge C6420
• Dell PowerEdge MX series

System Compatibility

• Windows Server
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux
• Ubuntu Server
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
• VMware ESXi
• Hyper-V
• CentOS and Rocky Linux

The Dell Mellanox 25GbE SFP28 Dual Port Daughter Card

The 1NN8T Dell Mellanox ConnectX-4 LX 25GbE SFP28 Dual Port Daughter Card is a high-performance network interface solution engineered for enterprise servers, data center infrastructure, cloud computing platforms, virtualization environments, and software-defined storage deployments. Designed to deliver advanced Ethernet connectivity, low latency packet processing, and reliable throughput, this Dell-certified daughter card integrates Mellanox ConnectX-4 LX controller technology to provide dual-port 25 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity through SFP28 interfaces.

The Dell 1NN8T Mellanox ConnectX-4 LX adapter combines hardware acceleration, intelligent packet offloading, advanced virtualization support, and energy-efficient performance into a compact daughter card form factor. Its dual-port design allows for network redundancy, failover support, link aggregation, and increased throughput, making it suitable for mission-critical applications requiring maximum uptime and operational continuity.

Core Product Specifications and Technical Architecture

The Dell manufacturer part number 1NN8T identifies this original OEM networking daughter card specifically validated for Dell enterprise server environments. As an officially supported Dell component, it ensures firmware compatibility, integrated server management recognition, and seamless deployment across supported PowerEdge platforms.

Mellanox ConnectX-4 LX Controller Technology

At the center of the adapter is the Mellanox ConnectX-4 LX Ethernet controller, recognized globally for delivering advanced networking capabilities with exceptional efficiency. Mellanox, now part of NVIDIA networking technologies, developed the ConnectX series to address the growing demand for high-speed, intelligent Ethernet connectivity in hyperscale and enterprise data centers.

The ConnectX-4 LX controller provides optimized packet handling, adaptive interrupt moderation, advanced congestion management, and hardware acceleration for networking tasks. By offloading processing tasks from the CPU, the controller improves application responsiveness while reducing host resource utilization.

Daughter Card Form Factor Advantages

Unlike traditional PCIe add-in network adapters, the daughter card form factor is designed specifically to integrate directly into supported Dell server motherboards. This architecture conserves valuable PCIe expansion slots for other peripherals while maintaining a clean and efficient hardware footprint.

The integrated design improves airflow, simplifies cable routing, and ensures streamlined maintenance for enterprise IT teams managing dense server deployments.

Performance Benefits for Enterprise Networking

One of the primary reasons organizations deploy the Dell 1NN8T Mellanox ConnectX-4 LX adapter is to achieve substantially higher data throughput compared to older network standards. Upgrading from 10GbE to 25GbE can deliver a 2.5x increase in available bandwidth without requiring significantly more power or rack space.

Ultra-Low Latency Networking

Latency reduction is equally important as bandwidth expansion. The Mellanox ConnectX-4 LX controller is engineered to minimize packet delay, making it suitable for latency-sensitive enterprise applications.

CPU Offloading and Hardware Acceleration

Modern networking adapters are expected to do more than transmit packets. The Dell 1NN8T daughter card includes extensive hardware offload capabilities that reduce CPU burden and improve overall server efficiency.

Enhanced Hypervisor Compatibility

The Dell Mellanox ConnectX-4 LX 25GbE daughter card is extensively deployed in virtualized server environments where reliable and scalable network performance is essential. Major hypervisors can leverage its advanced hardware capabilities to optimize virtual machine communication.

SR-IOV Support

Single Root I/O Virtualization allows multiple virtual machines to access dedicated virtual functions directly from the physical network adapter. This significantly improves network performance while reducing hypervisor overhead.

Overlay Network Acceleration

Cloud-native infrastructures often rely on overlay technologies such as VXLAN and NVGRE. The Mellanox controller can accelerate encapsulation and decapsulation tasks through hardware offloading, enabling better scalability for software-defined networking environments.

Software-Defined Storage Support

The 1NN8T Dell Mellanox ConnectX-4 LX daughter card is particularly valuable in storage-intensive environments where fast node-to-node communication is mandatory. Software-defined storage platforms rely heavily on network efficiency for replication, synchronization, and distributed data access.

iSCSI and NAS Performance Enhancement

Organizations using IP-based storage protocols can dramatically improve transfer speeds and reduce backup windows by upgrading to dual-port 25GbE networking. The increased bandwidth supports larger simultaneous storage transactions while maintaining predictable performance.

Reduced Storage Bottlenecks

Storage arrays and distributed storage nodes often generate substantial east-west traffic. The Dell 1NN8T adapter helps eliminate network congestion that can otherwise slow data retrieval, replication, and failover operations.

Cloud and Data Center Deployment Benefits

Modern data centers require scalable networking solutions that balance performance, efficiency, and operational simplicity. The 25GbE standard represented by this Mellanox adapter has become a preferred upgrade path from 10GbE because it offers substantial bandwidth improvements while leveraging familiar Ethernet ecosystems.

Improved Rack Density Efficiency

Higher network bandwidth per server means fewer physical links are required to achieve desired throughput targets. This improves cable management and reduces top-of-rack switch port consumption.

Support for Spine-Leaf Architectures

Contemporary data center networks commonly use spine-leaf topologies designed for low-latency east-west traffic. Dual-port 25GbE daughter cards integrate seamlessly into these architectures, enabling efficient server attachment to high-capacity switching fabrics.

Designed for Dell Enterprise Platforms

Because the 1NN8T is a Dell-certified OEM daughter card, it is engineered specifically for compatible PowerEdge systems. This ensures proper electrical compatibility, thermal validation, BIOS recognition, and lifecycle management integration.

Stability

OEM firmware alignment is critical in enterprise environments. Dell validation ensures that firmware updates for the Mellanox controller remain synchronized with server BIOS and management software, reducing deployment risks.

Direct Attach Copper Support

For shorter server-to-switch connections inside the same rack or adjacent racks, direct attach copper cables provide a cost-effective and low-latency alternative to optical modules.

Migration Flexibility

Many environments transitioning from 10GbE can leverage backward-compatible infrastructure strategies, allowing gradual network modernization while preserving investment in existing equipment.

Dual-Port Failover Protection

Dual independent ports provide essential redundancy. If one network path experiences failure, traffic can automatically shift to the secondary port, helping maintain uninterrupted service availability.

Enterprise-Class Build Quality

Dell OEM networking hardware undergoes strict validation for continuous operation in demanding enterprise conditions. This includes thermal testing, electrical compliance verification, and long-duration reliability assessments.

Secure Network Segmentation

Multi-tenant environments often require strict traffic separation. The Mellanox ConnectX-4 LX supports advanced VLAN tagging and segmentation features that enable secure isolation between departments, applications, and tenants.

Hardware-Based Traffic Controls

Embedded filtering and classification capabilities can help enforce traffic policies and improve security posture by managing network flows directly at the adapter level.

Virtual Workload Isolation

SR-IOV and virtualization-aware networking allow administrators to isolate virtual workloads more effectively while preserving high performance.

Energy Efficiency

Compared to deploying multiple lower-speed adapters, a single dual-port 25GbE daughter card can reduce power consumption while delivering superior bandwidth.

Reduced Cooling Requirements

Efficient thermal design and integrated daughter card architecture contribute to better airflow and potentially lower cooling demands within server chassis.

Virtualization Clusters

Hypervisor hosts supporting dozens or hundreds of virtual machines require reliable network throughput for storage access, migration traffic, and application communication. Dual-port 25GbE adapters help maintain stable performance across these workloads.

Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

HCI platforms depend heavily on east-west traffic between nodes. Fast and low-latency networking directly influences cluster responsiveness and resilience.

Database and Analytics Platforms

High-volume databases and distributed analytics engines benefit from rapid node synchronization and reduced data transfer delays.

Backup and Disaster Recovery

Large-scale backup jobs and offsite replication processes can complete more quickly with 25GbE networking, reducing recovery point objectives and downtime risk.

Container and Kubernetes Environments

Microservices architectures often generate extensive internal traffic. Efficient network adapters help maintain consistent service responsiveness as container density increases.

Trusted Data Center Performance

The Dell 1NN8T Mellanox ConnectX-4 LX 25GbE SFP28 Dual Port Daughter Card represents an enterprise-grade networking solution built for modern data center requirements. Its combination of dual-port high-speed Ethernet, advanced hardware acceleration, virtualization optimization, storage networking enhancement, and OEM-certified reliability makes it an ideal choice for organizations upgrading server connectivity infrastructure.

Whether deployed in virtualization clusters, hyper-converged systems, software-defined storage environments, cloud platforms, or enterprise application servers, this networking daughter card provides the performance foundation needed to support scalable and resilient digital operations.