On 03 Jan 2014, at 13:24 , Dinse, Gregg (NIH/NIEHS) [V] <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Jan 3, 2014, at 1:22 PM, steve harley <[email protected]> wrote: > >> on 2014-01-03 10:14 Dinse, Gregg (NIH/NIEHS) [V] wrote >>> Can I use both ethernet ports on my Mac Pro to make local network backups >>> faster, or at least to keep local network backups from slowing down >>> internet use? >> [...] >>> 1. connnect LaCie disk array to Mac Mini via thunderbolt >>> >>> 2. connect Mac Mini to gigabit router via ethernet >>> >>> 3. connect Mac Pro to gigabit router via ethernet >> >> i don't know the config procedure, but i'm pretty sure you could use both >> ports if you configure the Mac Pro to route between them (Mini on a >> subnet?); however i'd be surprised if your backups will saturate your >> network to the point it disrupts internet use; i understand the LaCie 5big >> is quite fast, but will the source drive also be so fast? and what type of >> backups are you doing (e.g. Time Machine seems to have a lot of CPU overhead) >> >> also, given its speed, i would recommend using the LaCie 5big for primary >> storage rather than for backup > > Hi Steve, > > Thanks for your response. This may be a case of me looking for a solution to > a non-existent problem! > > It's not like my backups take a really long time, and typically my internet > speed is just fine. It's probably more a case of me being curious about why > there are 2 ethernet ports on the Mac Pro and whether I could make use of the > second port if there was a simple and beneficial way to do so. There are two ports there so that your MacPro can act as the gateway for your LAN. You plug your Internet connection into one port and you plug your LAN into the other port. You install OS X Server on the Mac Pro and you setup that machine to do all sorts of things for your LAN machines. > As you say, the LaCie 5big should be fairly fast, but unfortunately I have no > direct way to connect it to my Mac Pro, which is my main computer. I tried > connecting it indirectly, through my Mac Mini as described above, and it > seemed to work reasonably well, though gigabit ethernet is presumably much > slower than a direct thunderbolt connection. I thought that if there was > some easy way to improve the ethernet speed, why not do it. The limiting factor on any spiny disk is the disk, not the gigabit Ethernet. > You recommended using the LaCie 5big for primary storage rather than for > backups, but I figured that definitely would slow things down (having my > primary storage accessed via ethernet). Not so you’d notice, no. Gigabit is up to 128Megabytes a second (by the math, in reality maxing out at about 110MB/s and realistically about 85-95MB/s… still faster than spiny disks). > Of course, I'm a novice at this stuff, so maybe that is a false assumption. > > I added a PCIe card that allows SATA-III; I attached a 512-GB SSD to it; and > I plan to use that for the OS and many of my user files. This upgrade to > SATA-III and SSD should make things much faster than using a HDD on the > native SATA-II bus, which is what I've always done before. Then I plan to > use 2 or 3 HDDs (in the internal drive bays of the Mac Pro) to form a RAID 0 > array, on which I will keep most of what I usually have in the Movies and > Music subdirectories (e.g., HD camcorder videos, HD EyeTV recordings, and the > iTunes library). I figured this RAID 0 array would be much faster than using > the LaCie 5big via ethernet, but please let me know if you think I'm wrong. I think RAID-0 is a poor choice. The limiting factor on your SSD may be the speed of your PCIe slot. I now on my MacPro different slots had different maximum speeds. Not sure if that still applies to the 2010 models (your 2012 MacPro is a 2010 macPro with the no-longer-manufactured CPU replaced with a slight upgrade, they even have the same model identified of MacPro5,1). -- Lady Astor: "If you were my husband I'd give you poison." Churchill: "If you were my wife, I'd drink it." _______________________________________________ MacOSX-talk mailing list [email protected] http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/macosx-talk
