Sharing a thunderbolt raid drive between two new Mac Pros

[Christopher Robertson]

Kind of lost me with some of the tech talk but I do gather it isn’t currently possible to playback video reliably on two computers simultaneously.

My wife and I do photography and work from the same home office. We often need to access the same external drive to retrieve photos or load adobe lightroom catalogs. I’ve considered a NAS system but that will not work for us for two reasons. 1. Lightroom catalogs will only open when stored locally or on DAS. 2. I use Backblaze as an offsite backup solution and they don’t support NAS drives only DAS.

Our current setup is several external drives connected to my computer that she can connect to through the network and pull files off the drives if she needs them. If she needs to open a lightroom catalog she has to wait for me to not be using my computer or drag the whole lightroom catalog to her computer so she can open it. This is obviously not efficient.

Solution? Could both of us connect to a Promise Pegasus drive through the 2 thunderbolt ports and access files at the same time and possibly even run different lightroom catalogs simultaneously? We can’t obviously open the same lightroom catalog at the same time but we create different catalogs for every client so that would rarely be an issue. Reliability in transfer speeds isn’t completely moot, but what’s of more concern though is could we even both be connect to the drive at the same time? Any thoughts or solutions would be greatly appreciated!

[Bob Zelin]

simple answer – no.
Better answer – use a Mac Mini as a server, connect your Pegasus R8 or G-Tech Studio XL to this, as well as a thunderbolt to 10G dual port adaptor, and now you have exactly what you want.

Or get a NAS, like e QNAP or Sinology with a minimum of 8 drives and multiple ports on the back of the QNAP.

But can you just plug in 2 computers to the Pegasus, or anything else ? No.

And before Accusys responds, YES, Accusys sells what you want – plug in your 2 thunderbolt cables and you are sharing. It will take up to 3 computers, no expansion – $10,000.

Bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com

[Travis Hoggard]

Bob,

So with your answer, my solution could be:

Pegasus -> Mac Mini -> Sonnet Dual Port Thunderbolt 2 10G Adaptor -> [2] iMacs via Thunderbolt 2 (in my case I’m using iMacs, not MPs)

So the Sonnet Adaptor takes care of the single drive to two computers issue?

I’m ready to buy the Sonnet right away if this solves the issue. Let me know! THANKS 🙂

[Chris Murphy]

I don’t understand the proposed topology. The Sonnet adapter is connected to computers. Assuming you want 10GigE for all computers, you’ll need three of them, one for each computer, with the mini connected to the Sonnet adapter which is in turn connected to the Pegasus.

Be aware that to support LACP 802.3ad to bond those two 10GigE ports into a single 20GigE logical link is often non-trivial. You’ll need a 10GigE switch that explicitly supports this and is compatible with how OS X implements it.

[Travis Hoggard]

Without a switch I’m SOL, correct?

I’m in the same boat as the OP; 1x Thunderbolt 2 RAID Storage, and 2x machines (iMacs) that want to use the RAID. I also have 1x spare Mac Mini I can use as the server.

Since I don’t have switch in there, what are my options?

Could I connect the RAID to the Mac Mini, and the Mac Mini to a switch, and then the two iMacs to same switch, then have the RAID shared to network via Mac Mini OSX Server? Using 1 Gigabit Ethernet, is this speed ok for offline HD editing?

[Bob Zelin]

for 2 computers you do not need a switch
Mac Mini – go to thunderbolt to 10G box (dual port) – loop your Thunderbolt drive arrays (Promise, Maxx Digital, Areca, G-Tech) onto this thunderbolt loop. Remember, if you don’t have an 8 bay, you will get crappy performance.

Hook up client computer 1 ethernet to one of the two ports on the 10G adaptor. Hookup client computer 2 ethernet to the other port of the 10G adaptor. Assign static IP addresses, setup file sharing, and you have shared storage.

If you need further info, just contact me.

Bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com