Upgrading a DIY NAS using a Thunderbolt PCIe card

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cbergeron

New Member
Aug 3, 2021
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I'm having trouble trying to squeeze more speed out of a Thunderbolt connection to my DIY NAS. The spec suggests I could get 40 Gbps, but I'm only getting 20 Gbps over TCP/IP. Anyone have any ideas?

Here's my blog post describing it and what I've done thus far. I just got a second Thunderbolt cable, so I'm going to try that just to see what I can do with a Bridge / bonded connection. Thanks in advance!
 
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niekbergboer

Active Member
Jun 21, 2016
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Thanks for trying this; I have a "server" motherboard (X11SRL-F) in my workstation, because it's in a rack, as I wanted the proper airflow and IPMI. I have been considering thunderbolt, but then with a long fiber thunderbolt "cable" there have a quiet office away from the noisy rack.

I guess there is no way to get that working without a thunderbolt connector on the motherboard, is there?
 

Gnodu

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Oct 10, 2015
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I know far, FAR less about Thinderbolt than you do. However, as I was reading your blog post, I wondered if the Mac mini actually has enough bandwidth between the storage (I am presuming it has only the M1 integrated SSD) to saturate a 40GB link? I am not sure how many drives it would take to get the bandwidth, but I doubt (despite the good things I have heard about M1 chips) it has got enough as it comes for the factory. I have run into this a couple of times- even on older 10Gb Ethernet connections when using only spinning disks. (My one attempt to saturate a 40G Infiniband connection fell short because I only had a bunch of SATA SSDs... lol- this was several years ago)

Mac mini: I don’t know if this is possible, but you might consider setting up the equivalent of a RamDrive?

Server: I don’t know how many HDDs vs SSDs you have, but it would take a whole lot of spinning drives to max out a 40GB connection- however, I am joking to assume that you have that part covered.

Just sharing a couple thoughts- hope they help!
-Matt
 

NateS

Active Member
Apr 19, 2021
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Sacramento, CA, US
While I'm not completely sure why the linux-mac connection is giving you 20x2 instead of 40x1 as the mac-mac connection does, I do wonder if that limits single stream throughput to 20Gbps in the same way that bonding regular network interfaces does. Perhaps the Gigabyte implementation needs to be told by the driver or the motherboard header whether to grab both or just one of the two possible channels, and it defaults to one, to leave bandwidth for other devices?

Have you tried running two separate data transfers at once, and seeing if you can get each of them up to 20Gbps simultaneously (assuming you can get the network driver to realize there's a second channel available)? Or like, using a DisplayPort display through the same cable at the same time as transferring data at 20Gbps? I bet that would work.