On Jan 3, 2014, at 3:35 PM, LuKreme <[email protected]> wrote: > 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.
OK, I guess I will forget about using the second ethernet port. It doesn't sound like it will speed up my proposed setup and I don't have any experience with OS X Server. >> 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). That is consistent with the very simplistic test I did (copy a large file over the LAN) -- I got roughly 80 MB/s. >> 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). As you say, I read that at one time the first two PCIe slots were faster (or wider or somehow better) than the third and fourth slots, but I also thought I read that this distinction disappeared by 2010. In any event, I have the SSD on a SATA-III PCIe card in slot 2, so that should be fine. The SSD definitely seems faster than the HDD in the SATA-II drive bay, so although the SSD may not be running nearly as fast as advertised, it doesn't seem like the limiting factor. Can you explain why you think RAID-0 is a poor choice for the HDDs in my Mac Pro? I thought this would increase both speed and capacity. I realize there is no security (as with RAID-1), but I plan to do backups, so hopefully that will provide some level of security. The LaCie 5big comes as a 5-disk RAID-0 array (5 x 2-TB = 10-TB). For some reason, their thunderbolt 5big only provides software RAID via OS X Disk Utility. So my only other choice is RAID-1. I thought I might switch from a single 5-disk RAID-0 to a 3-disk RAID-0 (for Time Machine backups) and a 2-disk RAID-0 for something else (maybe even a different backup scheme). As always, any advice is appreciated. Thanks, Gregg _______________________________________________ MacOSX-talk mailing list [email protected] http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/macosx-talk
