johboil

Q: Daisy-chaining and Thunderbolt Servers(?)

First post, not even sure if this is technically the correct area to post but here I go!

 

Basically my company is running a lot of large files that live on the cloud and are eating up space on our computers. Space is getting to the limit so we are thinking of investing in a 'LaCie 48TB 8big Rack Thunderbolt 2 Series'. It seems good for a few reasons, but I only can see one issue. Our creative team is all running macs (4 total members) and there is 2 Thunderbolt ports on that device.


How would one go about daisy-chaining the server to everyone?

Basically everyone is running a macbook pro which is connected to a thunderbolt display. Can we daisy-chain the displays together?

Or does anyone know of thunderbolt cable splitter that splits 1 port into 4?


Not really sure what my options are.

Thanks

Posted on May 30, 2016 8:29 AM

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Q: Daisy-chaining and Thunderbolt Servers(?)

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  • by MrHoffman,

    MrHoffman MrHoffman May 30, 2016 5:31 PM in response to johboil
    Level 6 (15,612 points)
    Mac OS X
    May 30, 2016 5:31 PM in response to johboil

    You're either headed for network-attached storage served from a Mac or served from a Network Attached Storage (NAS) server — either of which will be limited by the speed of your wired network — or toward what's known as a Fibre Channel Storage Area Network (FC SAN) configuration with the Apple Xsan software — which is faster, but more complex.

     

    Any Mac can serve storage to the network via the local System Preferences > Sharing settings, though configurations running OS X Server have user interfaces and tools that make this sort of file-serving task easier.

     

    For some more details here, see the OS X Server product overview.

     

    If you use FC SAN, you'll need storage that connects to the FC SAN, as well — a FC SAN is akin to a network connection and shared storage, but the SAN is dedicated to storage access, and most any recent FC SAN configuration will have host bus adapters and storage controllers that are vastly faster than a Gigabit Ethernet network.

     

    Storage on FC SAN can either be served to your Mac systems via — for instance — Thunderbolt to FC SAN connections from each client, or can be connected to some subset of server hosts and then served from those hosts out to the local network via wired Ethernet or (less desirably) via Wi-Fi; as network-attached storage.

     

    Thunderbolt doesn't permit having multiple hosts, so you can daisy-chain up to six boxes from one host, but — because OS X and Thunderbolt support is not a connection intended for multiple hosts on one Thunderbolt bus — you can't connect additional hosts to the bus.   There's no Thunderbolt splitter.  You can serve storage from Thunderbolt via the network by configuring file shares on the Mac that's connected to the Thunderbolt bus, and mounting the disks from the client systems.

     

    Apple does indicate "servers made easy" or such in their OS X Server advertising, but you'll want to have somebody familiar with Ethernet networking, IP configuration and addressing, DNS configuration and management, and other tasks available — OS X Server is easier, but configurations in this area can still be or can become complex and comparatively arcane.  SAN configurations add complexity, too.

     

    You might want to have a chat with the local Apple Business folks, if you have an Apple Store around.

     

    FWIW, the forum that this question was originally posted in is for Xserve server hardware and RAID storage hardware, and no Xserve server supports Thunderbolt.   Xserve and Xserve RAID were connected via FC SAN (using Xsan), but they're rather archaic hardware at present and not really something most folks would probably be interested in a new deployment.

  • by beatle20359,

    beatle20359 beatle20359 Jun 1, 2016 5:32 AM in response to johboil
    Level 2 (314 points)
    Jun 1, 2016 5:32 AM in response to johboil

    Hi Johboil,

     

    You might want to have a look here.. http://www.accusys.com.tw/T-Share/A16T2-Share/ You can set up an Xsan over Thunderbolt though you will need to use one of the 4 ports on the Accusys to act as the metadata controller which is a requirement of an Xsan environment. This would then only leave you with 3 useable ports for the users machines.

     

    Things to be aware of.

     

    Thunderbolt Cables over 3m are very expensive as they're optical

     

    10GB Ethernet and a server with sufficient storage might be a better option for you. Xsan is great and I look after a lot of Xsan installs but it's not something to jump into especially if a fileserver will do the job.

     

    Thanks

    Beatle

  • by Camelot,

    Camelot Camelot Jun 1, 2016 10:55 PM in response to johboil
    Level 8 (47,233 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jun 1, 2016 10:55 PM in response to johboil

    Your simplest solution would be to get that array (or a similar one), connect it to one host via Thunderbolt, and have that host act as a file server to the rest of the network. That way all the network clients can access the storage through the central host.

     

    Granted, this will limit throughput to 1gbps (unless you upgrade the network on your hosts), but that may or may not be a problem depending on just how large the files are.