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Ultra fast Thunderbolt NAS with Apple M1 and Linux

chrisbergeron.com

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Re: Ultra fast Thunderbolt NAS with Apple M1 and Linux

#81

Post by genewitch »

SilverRed wrote: post #74
reacharavindh wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Local storage and Networked storage always have their places. Local solid state storage almost always gets you better performance because you negate the overhead of network. Unless, you’re talking fancy arrays connected to saturate 100G NICs. Local storage falls apart the moment you need that storage accessible from another machine…

Networked storage also falls apart the moment you need anything better than basic file storage. So many filesystem features do not work networked, most network file mounts do not support any kind of modern security and the ones that do are often super slow. Everything has its place, but I wasted so much time trying to get a nas to work as storage for my home server.

I have a Synology and use the iscsi feature for VMs that aren't even in the same building as the NAS, what sort of issues aren't solved in this sort of way?

Don't get me wrong I have nothing but problems with NFS and SMB access on the Linux clients. Windows works perfectly, as in whatever I set on the Synology is what I get on windows.

There's got to be a better way!

Re: Ultra fast Thunderbolt NAS with Apple M1 and Linux

#82

Post by wmf »

genewitch wrote: post #78
reacharavindh wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. I assumed it was a simple adaptor for TB3 to 40Gbps Ethernet or atleast QSFP+ Since TB also advertises 40 Gbps, but looks like expensive niche. At $1500, you might as well spend time to figure out how to get Linux to work better with Thunderbolt card. For other devices in the network that do not impose Thunderbolt though, Melanox 40G NICs are surprisingly cheap.

How cheap is "surprising" and who sells them? I wouldn't mind upgrading my link to the server barn and my house to an assuredly future proof 40gbit...

People talking about cheap 10G/40G are getting it used on eBay. They have a bad habit of comparing used prices against new prices without disclosing it. For example, if you're talking about new equipment, 40G is obsolete and you should buy 25G/50G instead. But used 40G is super-cheap because it's obsolete.

Re: Ultra fast Thunderbolt NAS with Apple M1 and Linux

#83

Post by wmf »

FullyFunctional wrote: post #80
21com wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> bridging was horribly slow. Can you quantify that? (I'm wondering if it might be good-enough for my needs.)

I'm afraid it was 2+ years ago so I don't remember, but it must have been slower than the comparable speed from the gigabit wired connection. FWIW, I was so happy with the Sonnet (not as hot as some alternatives I've used) that I bought two more. However, unless you are using fiber or for other reasons preferring SFP+, going with the grain and getting 10Gbase-T is probably easier. Getting back to the OP, this could b…

I'm pretty sure Thunderbolt 3 cables will work: https://www.amazon.com/optical-thunderbolt-cables-Corning/s?...

Re: Ultra fast Thunderbolt NAS with Apple M1 and Linux

#84

Post by FullyFunctional »

wmf wrote: post #83
FullyFunctional wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm afraid it was 2+ years ago so I don't remember, but it must have been slower than the comparable speed from the gigabit wired connection. FWIW, I was so happy with the Sonnet (not as hot as some alternatives I've used) that I bought two more. However, unless you are using fiber or for other reasons preferring SFP+, going with the grain and getting 10Gbase-T is probably easier. Getting back to the OP, this could b…

I'm pretty sure Thunderbolt 3 cables will work: https://www.amazon.com/optical-thunderbolt-cables-Corning/s?...

Thanks. $528 for 30 meter TB3 compared to $35 for 30 meter OM4 and a pair of $10 10G SFP+ modules (and the same OM4 will carry 25GbE just fine). Seems like it's not really cost effective.

Re: Ultra fast Thunderbolt NAS with Apple M1 and Linux

#85

Post by cyberge99 »

CharlesW wrote: post #65
cyberge99 wrote: post #2

The maturity of Thunderbolt hardware and software support should have TB on a short list of high speed local connectivity, high-bandwidth multi-disk access options.

Especially now that it's USB 4.

They're very similar, but there are differences. Most notably, Thunderbolt 4 guarantees a minimum speed[0] for compliance, whereas USB4 has a lower minimum.

Also, I believe USB4 was designed for smaller files / blocks and Thunderbolt is designed for more raw output.

[0] https://liliputing.com/2020/11/differences-between-thunderbo...

Re: Ultra fast Thunderbolt NAS with Apple M1 and Linux

#86

Post by cyberge99 »

SilverRed wrote: post #75
interactivecode wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you should use the built in lazy loading https://caniuse.com/loading-lazy-attr or intersection observer for this https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Intersectio...

Is there really a need for lazy loading a blog page over just providing a height and width attribute and letting the browser work it out?

Not a need, per se, but it's an SEO recommendation according to web.dev measure. Both are actually recommended.

Re: Ultra fast Thunderbolt NAS with Apple M1 and Linux

#87

Post by SilverRed »

genewitch wrote: post #81
SilverRed wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Networked storage also falls apart the moment you need anything better than basic file storage. So many filesystem features do not work networked, most network file mounts do not support any kind of modern security and the ones that do are often super slow. Everything has its place, but I wasted so much time trying to get a nas to work as storage for my home server.

I have a Synology and use the iscsi feature for VMs that aren't even in the same building as the NAS, what sort of issues aren't solved in this sort of way? Don't get me wrong I have nothing but problems with NFS and SMB access on the Linux clients. Windows works perfectly, as in whatever I set on the Synology is what I get on windows. There's got to be a better way!

I found that there was basically nothing that I could find which would allow me to mount a filesystem as if it was natively connected securely over the local network without going to real enterprise stuff I either couldn't understand or didn't have the hardware for.

Everything I found was basically FUSE style things where it looks kind of like local storage but any time you want to use advanced features or high performance it would fail.

SSHFS was secure and easy to set up but was maxing out the CPU on my NAS and also did not support file permissions.

Re: Ultra fast Thunderbolt NAS with Apple M1 and Linux

#88

Post by mbreese »

CharlesW wrote: post #64
boynamedsue wrote: post #28

I just wish Apple would offer a native iSCSI initiator.

It sure would be convenient if they Sherlocked the developers of commercial solutions. The globalSAN initiator's been working well for me, FWIW.

>globalSAN initiator's been working well for me

It doesn't look like it's going to be supported for M1 Macs or is really all that compatible with Big Sur. From their site, it seems that you have to jump through a few hoops to add a kernel extension to get it to work[1].

Sounds like a good opportunity for Apple to roll something into the OS.

[1] https://support.studionetworksolutions.com/hc/en-us/articles...

Re: Ultra fast Thunderbolt NAS with Apple M1 and Linux

#89

Post by pr0nin »

whalesalad wrote: post #18

Just yesterday I was thinking how badly I want an obscenely fast local datastore for Docker. I am managing a handful of clients right now who are all using Docker containers for their microservice environments and my local machine runs out of disk daily. What I really want is lightning quick network storage, but I don't think it would be feasible to roll out 10g networking in my current rental home.

What about separate Linux box laying around just to run docker? 8GB M1 Mac just don't have enough RAM for docker VM.

Looks like local docker server should just work exactly same way as local docker while you at same location.

Re: Ultra fast Thunderbolt NAS with Apple M1 and Linux

#90

Post by giantrobot »

jeroenhd wrote: post #21
michelb wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only safari on big sur has webp support.

That's very strange. Is this a versioning problem (i.e. Catalina not being supported anymore?) or is there some kind of hardware restriction? From what I can find, Catalina should still be supported for more than a year from now, right? Edit: well, that's bizarre. Caniuse.com [0] lists the same restriction, WebP is only available from Big Sur onwards. And then people wonder why nobody likes developing for Safari. [0]…

Safari uses AVFoundation and ImageIO for handling video and image data respectively. These frameworks are tied to OS releases. This ends up meaning the latest Safari on an older OS might not handle some formats/codecs.

So Safari gets free accelerated handling of new formats and codecs but only when the underlying OS supports them.

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