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Interesting to see who is ready for Thunderbolt 3
with the release of the new Mac Book Pro, with it’s four thunderbolt 3/USB-C ports, I find it interesting to see who is ready, and who is not ready.
Lacie has the biggest RAID array – the 12big, which they claim will do about 2400 MB/sec at RAID 5 with regular 7200 RPM sata drives. This is certainly faster than any other conventional SATA RAID arrays out there. Highpoint is showing a Thunderbolt 3 8 bay RAID array, but it only specifies Windows drivers at this time. ATTO has lots of Thunderbolt 3 products that can convert to 12G RAID enclosures, so if you already own a 12G RAID, the ATTO would allow you to connect to the MacBook Pro and get similar speeds to the Lacie 12Big.
While Apple shows Promise RAID’s in their advertising for the MacBook Pro, Promise, from what I can see, is not offering anything Thunderbolt 3 – both the Promise RAIDs, and thunderbolt to 10G adaptors are all thunderbolt 2 currently.
No mention of Thunderbolt 3 from G-Tech either. Or Sonnet (but Sonnet did display tons of Thunderbolt 3 products at NAB 2016).Lots of little adaptors – Apple has Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adaptors, and USB-C to Ethernet (1G only) adaptors. The only thunderbolt 3 to 10G (or 40G) adaptors with Mac drivers that I see are again from ATTO Technology.
And for external monitors – the LG is the highlighted thunderbolt product. With that said, it seems everyone was buying LG 34″ Thunderbolt 2 monitors anyway, because they are so good, and a great financial value.
So if there is a refresh of the iMac coming with USB-C and Thunderbolt 3, and if there will be no Mac Pro – or no new Mac Pro until new GPU chips are available from someone – then 2017 new hardware purchases may be based on an Apple laptop. Pretty strange.
I have never ever ever been excited about an FCP X release – until now !
Bob Zelin
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bo******@****ud.com -
5 Replies
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my observations on this article –
The Anker Thunderbolt 3 hub is dirt cheap, and will “do the job” for many people.
I know that Sonnet and Highpoint will release products like this (Cal Digit already has) but today is not that day.
And of course OWC and Akitio will have full product lines to show for Thunderbolt 3 as well.The Promise Pegasus 3 and SanLink3 are discussed in a April 2016 press release from Promise, but these products are
not on the “Products” section of the Promise website, nor does B&H show this product with “coming soon”.
From what I see, ATTO is the only one with Thunderbolt 3 to 10G and 40G adaptors that are ready. And Lacie and Highpoint appear to be “ready” with the larger arrays, and are “coming soon”. I am sure that Promise (and G-Tech and Maxx Digital and others) will follow soon.As for Symply, I am certainly anxious to see what they come out with, but being based on StorNext, I can’t imagine this system being inexpensive, or easy to configure. Most systems today, from EVERY manufacturer are pretty inexpensive, and set up very easily, and once setup, do not require system administration to keep running. XSAN systems, of course, are someone’s full time career, which is why most companies don’t incorporate XSAN into their facilities these days. To keep an IT guy on staff just to keep your shared storage running is pretty ridiculous in 2016. Perhaps Symply has some tricks up their sleeve, that will make things work much easier in the future than the old XSAN or Quantum StorNext systems.
LumaForge is an a great position, as FCP X will now be taken much more seriously in my opinion. And while 10G Ethernet is really more than enough for almost everyone’s workflow today, it will take very little for LumaForge to install 40G Mellanox cards into their server chassis, and make their boxes blazing fast.
As for QNAP – well, that’s what I mostly do these days. QNAP is offering 10G shared storage at ridiculous low prices. Up until 2015, the 10G cards for QNAP’s were options. Today, many QNAP systems come standard with 10G cards. And QNAP fully supports the Mellanox 40G product line – who knows – perhaps the next gen will have 40G cards standard, just like the 10G cards are standard now in many models.
I never thought Apple would pull this off, or even care, but they did. It should be an exciting 2017 for new products (while most of us cry “I have to go out and buy new stuff all over again !!!!!”).
Bob Zelin
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com -
Bob, what do you think about using a new 15″ Macbook Pro as a server? I’d like to take advantage of these new Tbolt3 storage products and it seems a shame to buy a 2013 Mac Pro at this point. Maybe if they finally release an updated Mac Pro I can swap that in next year, hmmm…
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Nice article Noah! Looks like a great time to be in the adapter business. To think I was pondering going 100% Adobe on the PC just to have more hardware choices. After this update to both FCPX (loving it) and the MBPro I’m so happy I waited…
It was at a Vegas premiere that I resolved to become an avid FCPX user.
Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Downtown Long Beach, California
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1680680/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1 -
I see no reason not to use the new Mac Book Pro as a server. To do it today, right now, you need the Lacie 12Big (which is not out yet), and an ATTO Thunderbolt 3 to 10G adaptor to feed a Netgear 10G switch. But as you can imagine, every one that you see advertising here will come out with a full line of Thunderbolt 3 products – certainly by April 2017 for NAB, and who knows what Apple has in mind for the iMac and Mac Mini. But yes, the laptop would absolutely work.
Bob Zelin
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com
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