8P2T2 Dell Mellanox ConnectX-6 Dx EN 100GbE Card with 8 Ports & 2 Transceivers

Product Overview of the Dell 8P2T2 Mellanox Gigabit Ethernet

The Dell 8P2T2 Mellanox ConnectX-6 Dx EN 100 Full Height Gigabit Ethernet Card is a high-efficiency networking solution engineered for modern enterprise data centers. This advanced adapter delivers ultra-fast connectivity with multi-port architecture and dual transceiver support, ensuring stable, scalable, and low-latency network performance. Designed for demanding workloads, virtualization environments, and cloud infrastructure, it enhances data throughput while maintaining reliable communication across server systems. This network interface card is built to optimize bandwidth usage and improve overall system productivity in mission-critical applications.

General Information

• Brand: Dell
• Part Number: 8P2T2
• Device Type: High-Performance Network Adapter / Ethernet Card

Technical Specifications

• Interface Type: PCI Express (PCIe)
• Network Speed: Up to 100 Gigabit Ethernet capability
• Ports: 8 high-performance network ports
• Transceivers: Dual transceiver support for enhanced connectivity
• Form Factor: Full-height server adapter card

Compatibility

• PowerEdge C6520
• PowerEdge C6525
• PowerEdge R640
• PowerEdge R650
• PowerEdge R6525
• PowerEdge R660
• PowerEdge R6615
• PowerEdge R6625
• PowerEdge R740
• PowerEdge R740xd
• PowerEdge R740xd2
• PowerEdge R750
• PowerEdge R750xa
• PowerEdge R7525
• PowerEdge R760
• PowerEdge R760xa
• PowerEdge R760xd2
• PowerEdge R7615
• PowerEdge R7625
• PowerEdge R840
• PowerEdge R860
• PowerEdge R940
• PowerEdge R940xa
• PowerEdge R960
• PowerEdge Xe8640
• PowerEdge Xe9640
• PowerEdge Xe9680
• PowerEdge Xr12
• PowerEdge Xr5610
• PowerEdge Xr7620
• PowerEdge Xr8610t
• PowerEdge Xr8620t

The Dell 8P2T2 Mellanox ConnectX-6 8 Ports and 2 Transceiver

This category represents a high-performance class of enterprise network interface solutions designed for modern data centers, cloud computing environments, virtualization clusters, and high-throughput server infrastructures. The Dell 8P2T2 Mellanox ConnectX-6 Dx EN 100 Full Height Gigabit Ethernet Card with 8 Ports and 2 Transceivers is engineered for organizations that require extremely low latency, high bandwidth aggregation, advanced offloading capabilities, and scalable network performance across multiple workloads. It is built for mission-critical environments where network reliability, throughput consistency, and hardware acceleration are essential for operational continuity.

Enterprise-Grade High-Speed Networking Architecture

At the core of this network interface solution is a powerful architecture designed to handle multi-tenant environments and intensive data transfer workloads. The card supports extremely high data throughput, enabling servers to communicate efficiently across distributed systems. With 8 integrated ports, it allows parallel data streams that reduce bottlenecks in large-scale computing environments. The inclusion of 2 high-speed transceivers ensures stable optical or copper connectivity depending on deployment requirements.

This architecture is particularly beneficial for environments running distributed applications, real-time analytics, artificial intelligence model training, and storage-heavy operations. By distributing traffic across multiple ports, the system significantly reduces congestion while maintaining consistent performance even under peak loads.

Advanced Network Interface

The Mellanox ConnectX-6 Dx EN controller embedded within this card represents a next-generation network processing engine. It integrates advanced packet processing logic, hardware-based acceleration, and intelligent traffic management features. These capabilities allow the NIC to offload compute-intensive networking tasks from the main CPU, improving overall server efficiency.

Key functions include stateless offloads, checksum processing, segmentation handling, and encryption acceleration. These features reduce CPU overhead and free system resources for application-level workloads such as virtualization, container orchestration, and database processing.

Multi-Port High-Density

The inclusion of 8 network ports makes this adapter ideal for high-density server configurations. Each port can be utilized independently or configured for link aggregation, failover redundancy, or traffic segmentation. This flexibility enables system administrators to design highly optimized network topologies tailored to specific workload requirements.

In large-scale data centers, multi-port NICs reduce the need for multiple separate adapters, simplifying hardware management and improving airflow efficiency within server chassis. This also contributes to lower energy consumption and reduced infrastructure complexity.

High-Speed Transceiver

The 2 transceivers included with this network card enable flexible deployment across different network infrastructures. These transceivers support optical fiber connections, allowing long-distance, high-bandwidth communication between servers, switches, and storage systems.

Transceiver compatibility ensures that the card can be integrated into both existing and new infrastructure setups. This flexibility is essential for organizations transitioning from legacy systems to modern high-speed networking environments.

Optical Fiber Performance Benefits

Optical fiber connectivity offers superior bandwidth capacity and reduced signal degradation over long distances. This makes it ideal for large data center environments where servers may be physically distributed across multiple racks or buildings.

Scalability Systems

As enterprise systems grow, network scalability becomes increasingly important. The transceiver-based architecture allows organizations to expand their network infrastructure without replacing core hardware components. This ensures long-term investment protection and infrastructure adaptability.

Data Center and Enterprise Deployment Scenarios

This category of network interface card is widely used in enterprise data centers where high-speed communication and reliability are critical. It supports workloads such as big data processing, artificial intelligence training clusters, high-frequency trading systems, and large-scale storage replication.

Its ability to handle multiple simultaneous data streams makes it suitable for environments where thousands of users or applications are active at the same time. This ensures stable performance even under extreme network load conditions.

Cloud Infrastructure Integration

Cloud service providers benefit significantly from high-density NICs like this model. It enables efficient virtualization, dynamic resource allocation, and seamless scaling of network capacity across cloud nodes. This improves service delivery speed and reduces infrastructure overhead.

Enterprise Storage Networking

Storage area networks rely heavily on fast and reliable data transmission. This network card supports high-speed data replication and backup operations, ensuring that large datasets can be transferred efficiently between storage nodes without performance degradation.

Quality of Service Optimization

Quality of Service controls enable prioritization of network traffic based on application importance. This ensures that latency-sensitive applications such as voice communication, real-time analytics, and financial systems receive priority over less critical data transfers.

Performance Efficiency and System Optimization

One of the key advantages of this network card category is its ability to improve overall system efficiency. By reducing CPU dependency for network processing tasks, it allows servers to allocate more resources to application-level workloads. This results in improved computational performance and reduced hardware strain.

Energy efficiency is also improved due to optimized data handling processes. Lower CPU utilization translates into reduced power consumption, which is particularly beneficial in large-scale data center deployments.

CPU Offload Benefits

Offloading networking tasks from the CPU significantly improves system responsiveness. This is especially important in environments running high-performance applications such as machine learning models and distributed computing frameworks.

High-Demand Workload Optimization

This category is specifically optimized for environments with extremely high network demand. Whether handling real-time data streams, AI computations, or enterprise-level virtualization, it maintains stable and predictable performance.

Its ability to process multiple simultaneous connections makes it ideal for mission-critical systems where downtime or performance degradation is not acceptable.

Big Data Processing Environments

Big data platforms require high-speed ingestion and processing of large datasets. This network card ensures that data pipelines remain efficient and uninterrupted, supporting analytics engines and distributed storage systems.