[Barry Sharp]

Chris…. that link did not work for me…. I get “Page not found” …. “We’re sorry – the page you’re looking for can’t be found.” !

[Barry Sharp]

Did you first remove the previous/old SanLink2 driver code before installing the new code ?

[Barry Sharp]

Do you see the same issue when JUST one FCPX is running and pulling data from the EVO ?

[Barry Sharp]

I don’t see the attached AJA System Test for one partition! Maybe I’m not looking in the right place for it….

[Barry Sharp]

Bob:

Yes I did detail our office setup (somewhat) in an earlier posting, but maybe I did not clearly describe it or it was incomplete.

Today we have three Macs. We do also rent extra Macs at times when Project workload demands it.

1)
Pseudo file server; MacPro6,1, (2.7GHz 12core, 1TB SSD, 64GB RAM, Dual D700s)

This is the pseudo file server in our central office. It has an 8 disk SoftRAID managed RAID-5 made up with 6x 2TB and 2x 3TB Toshiba 7200 rpm disks accessed over Thunderbolt. We use SoftRAID version 5.5.5.

The RAID-5 is partitioned into 4x 3.5TB (known as BIG-1, BIG-2, BIG-3 and BIG-4) and 2x 1TB JBODs for OS backups (Primary & Test OSes).

The BIG-1/2/3/4 can deliver sustained 650 MBytes/sec for reads and some sustained 350 MBytes/sec for writes. These units are use for loading up Project data to be used by all office Macs.

The BIG-1/2/3/4 units are backed up daily in early morning hours to a MacGurus 5-bay Burly eSATA Port Multiplier that has 5x 4TB disks. The Burly unit is daisy chained off the 8 disk RAID-5 unit using a TSATAII-PRO-E34 – Sonnet Tempo 2 Port Express34 Pro SATA Host Card in a Sonnet ECHOPRO-E34 – Sonnet Echo ExpressCard Pro.

This MP6,1 is also used for all Project workloads.

2)
Client MP6,1 (3.5 GHz 6core, 1TB SSD, 64GB RAM, Dual D700s). Has a local 4T USB3 unit for local backups. This MP has Thunderbolt Bridge connection the the pseudo file server in our central office.

3)
Client MP6,1 (3.5 GHz 6core, 1TB SSD, 64GB RAM, Dual D700s). Has a local 4T USB3 unit for local backups. This MP has Thunderbolt Bridge connection the the pseudo file server in our central office.

Today all the Mac systems run latest version of Apple’s El Capitan. We are testing macOS Sierra at this time when we have some free time over weekends.

All three Macs use bonded 1GbE ethernet to a managed Cisco SG200-18 switch.

Sometimes we bring in a high-end 27″ iMac to help with workload. We may use Thunderbolt Bridge or bonded 1GbE ethernet to connect it to the pseudo file server in our central office via the Cisco SG200-18 switch.

Each client and the pseudo file server will read their respective piece of the current Project and crunch away independently and return their results to the pseudo file server when done. There is never any confusion with file collisions happening on the pseudo file server. Original Project data is never ever overwritten. The pseudo file server Mac is responsible for pulling all the Client results together to produce final results.

The one weakness in our setup is if the pseudo file server hangs or crashes during heavy Project workloads. This has been a problem for us as now and then as Mac OS can act up at times as can the Adobe/Premier/FCP software etc.

Our MP6,1 systems run 24/7 and have been for nearly 3 years now without any hardware issues at all. The Burly did fail one time and I had to replace its power supply and install some stealthy fans (very quiet). The 8 disk RAID-5 unit lost one of its disks just a month ago but being a RAID-5 no data was lost.

If we were to grow much beyond having 4 Macs we would definitely need a bone fide File Server than can deliver at least ~400 MBytes/sec to each and every Client machine at same time. We would at this point abandon the use of Thunderbolt Bridge because it would become too unwieldy and quite likely there would be insufficient Thunderbolt ports for connections. Thus if say we had 5 Macs in the office a file server would need to push out at least 2000 MBytes/sec at any given time over multiple 10G connections. This would be a nice and easily manage network but obvious would require some serious brass/money. ?

I hope the above helps.

[Barry Sharp]

I made a further check into the use of SANLink2 for my purposes/goals and used the SANLink Utility to spiff up the quality of the data movements. With this I came close to what the Thunderbolt Bridge delivered. No matter, the Thunderbolt Bridge still trumped the use of SANLink2 Adapters for my case.

This has been a good educational task and now I can put it behind me and return the SANLink2 Adapters for a full refund. I must say the SANLink2 Adapters are very well made, are quiet, and run a bit warm to touch. The Adapters having two 10G ports is a bonus for sure and could be used for bonding for link aggregation, improved bandwidth and fail-over protection for one link going down/failing. They are costly but much less (1/2 the cost) than the earlier PCIe 10G cards of the past for older MacPros. If and when our office require the need for a true File Server, and we still have the MacPros with Thunderbolt ports, the likes of the SANLink2 Adapters will be high on our list.

The bottom line is that we can enjoy our $60 Thunderbolt Bridge solution knowing that 10G brings little to the table for helping us at close to 25x our current cost.

[Barry Sharp]

I suspect the extra 20% CPU use is caused by the Promise SANLink2 driver software as it’s shown as kernel CPU use.

[Barry Sharp]

I forgot to mention that on the Client side when using the SANLink2 the Client’s kernel cpu use was 20% higher than when using the Thunderbolt Bridge.

Using the Thunderbolt Bridge the kernel_task cpu hovered around 98% while using the SANLink2 it hovered around 120%.

To ensure I was not seeing things I had my Mac Client system request a 30 GB file (that took some 120 secs) from the Mac Server and monitored the cpu use for using the SANLink2 and then for using the Thunderbolt Bridge.

20% is significant IMO.

[Barry Sharp]

Bob: I was not offended in any way. I understand the need for people like yourself needing the income or revenue stream as some call it.

My goal in all of this issue is to provide my son’s office with a cost effective solution for his office Mac workflow environment. He and his hired freelancers are indeed video professional people that use the Adobe and Apple products on Macs exclusively. For the past 3 years using Apple’s Thunderbolt Bridge for File Sharing has proven to be VERY beneficial and obviously low cost. I compare this to a similar but larger business partner (many more video editing workstations than we had) who decided to go to employing 10G throughout their office. They ended up paying around $100K when all said and done. The same freelancers they used were same as we used in our office and they were astounded by how well our small shop was able to get the same kind of work done using the Thunderbolt Bridge networking for file sharing.

Personally, I have no real issues with Apple’s implementation of Thunderbolt for simple networking and/or file sharing between Macs. It’s a very easy and understandable and low cost. I’m also aware that Apple’s networking software isn’t on a par with the likes of Linux and other proprietary UNIX systems. They do make changes that negatively affect networking as I use it at home and in the office. As mentioned earlier, one has to pay attention to the use of SMP and AFP in the macOS File Sharing configuration panel. Sometimes SMB is best and other times AFP is best. At this time with El Capitan and Sierra I find AFP is the best choice by a long shot.

Back in 1998 I was on a panel with several other HPC-centric people at Manchester University in UK and was asked if Linux was suitable/reliable/robust-enough etc for aircraft design engineering problems. This was being asked by some of the USA Govt. folks in the audience who presumably were at the time using costly proprietary systems from SGI, Cray, IBM, HP, Govt. home-grown systems, and so on. Around that time Linux was a low-cost ‘child’ OS and viewed with suspicion by a large community of IT folk. My response was that as Linux matured it would be the right choice because of its low cost and eventual wide-spread use. Some of the audience was astounded with my response as they knew Boeing was using Cray and SGI systems for the aircraft design engineering problems. It’s a pity you were not in that audience some 20 years ago. ?

Yes, fore sure, ones technical baggage can be harmful (or gets in the way) when using it for todays changing technologies. The need for keeping an open mind is essential and there should be no hesitation in trying to learn the ‘new stuff’.

Ethernet technology has been around for a long time and IMO will last for quite some time as its cheap, mature, easily deployed when comparing it to other more exotic and vastly more expensive networks such as Infiniband.

When I left Boeing I left behind an enormous shared file storage system I helped to design and implement. Access to it was from thousands of nodes in several large compute Clusters. It was a Panasas system and is still being employed and expanded today with much success. It was based on ethernet as well. You can imagine the number of large switches used to bring all that together. It was a challenge but fun to work on. The IT Networking Dept. were absolutely astounded at the amount of data we were pushing around the network attached/servicing the Panasas storage system. It overloaded their accounting data fields because the numbers were so large. ?

[Barry Sharp]

Hey… No need to apologize for your age of for Chris Duffy. ? I’m several years ahead of you both. I’ve known Chris for quite awhile related to HPC. I’m pretty sure Chris knows my background.

I was unaware that Creative COW was not a forum for sharing information freely as is done on many other sites. My bad for not realizing this. I’ve been using/reading Creative COW for quite some time and yes, my account probably expired at some time and had to re-sign in a few days ago.

From my SANLink2 testing I do find it’s a waste of money for my son’s office environment. The Thunderbolt Bridge performs better and quite honestly the use of SANLink2 for joining two MP6,1s together is completely unnecessary. Thunderbolt 2 provides 20 Gbps and the 10G provides 1/2 of this. So really it’s no surprise to me that the use of SANLink2 cannot improve data transfer rates. My whole point was to see if the i/o transfers would be smoother over the hybrid TB/10G connection vs. the pure TB connection. My testing shows no change in this respect when using the TB/10G connection and of course the transfer rates are less than the pure TB connection.

As in my previous posting I did say the use of SANLink2 for connecting two MP6,1s was an anathema because the real purpose of the SANLink2 is for connecting to a 10G File Server storage system. If ever we were at a point at the office where we would need this type of File Server then the SANLink2 would be a good/proper choice and I would be in touch with Chris.

The one disadvantage we have at the office today for not employing a proper File Server such as SmallTree has, is that if our pseudo File Server crashes it affects all the Client Macs. Having a proper File Server would not cause this, unless of course the File Server crashes. ?

I will make a final test run using the SANLink2 adapter at the office over the weekend to satisfy myself with what I’ve learned so far on my home testing rig. At the office it will be that Server and Client system both employ Thunderbolt 2 whereas my home rig uses TB-1 on the Server and TB-2 on the Client. I do not expect the office testing to show a different set of results to what my home rig as shown so far.

I’m sure that at some time in the future I will call Chris again for his help/advice when we require a bone fide File Server storage system.

My SANLink2 adapters can be returned within 14 days for full refund, so their cost is not a factor for me.

Finally, I apologize if I’ve abused this forum thinking I can obtain free knowledge/help/advice. Personally, I like to share my knowledge, just as I’ve done in this thread. Just keep in mind that the older you get the more you find you don’t know, but do realize how much you do know. The trick/hope while aging is to not forget what you do know.

Take care and thanks for the discussion. ?