[Dipak Ramkumar]

Thanks everyone for their prompt responses!

We are in the process of building a custom NVME SSD array. I currently have one 2TB NVME SSD connected to the Mac mini 2018 (which has its own, dedicated 10GbE port) via thunderbolt 3. This is just shared using the SMB file sharing protocol in OS X. SMB signing has been disabled.

When attempting to test the access speed to this external SSD using an iMac Pro (also with its own dedicated 10GbE) port, the max write speeds I am seeing are around ~700 and reads around ~750 MB/sec. The NVME SSD through TB3 (accessed directly on the Mac) has read/write speeds over 2,000 MB/sec. Assuming my 10Gb link is working appropriately, I would expect around a 1000 MB/sec transfer rate to this drive. I am assuming the speeds that I am getting are getting limited by the SMB protocol, which seems to be associated with high transfer overhead. Unfortunately, I cannot use AFP since all Macs in the deployment are already running High Sierra or Mojave. I guess NFS would be another option, but its not clear to me how to specifically set this up for an external SSD in Mac OS. It appears that this was previously doable using the GUI in OS X server tools, but this is no longer possible.

I appreciate everyone’s expertise and advice.