Freenas direct link to PC via USB3?

[deathevor]

Quick question.

Is it possible to connect Freenas to PC directly via USB3?
To see it for example as an external HDD.

It's just that USB3 protocol speeds are 4.8Gbps. Which sounds much greater than even dual Lan connection.

So does anybody knows a way to do it?

 

[cyberjock]

There actually are special cables you can buy to link 2 computers together via USB3. It simulates a network with IP addresses and everything. They're rather expensive and not well supported even in Windows. So.. nope.

 

[toddos]

Unless you're running your pool on SSDs, disk speed will be your bottleneck even with a gigabit network.

 

[cyberjock]

I think the OP knows that.. that's why he's hoping that there is a way to connect via USB3 since USB3 is 5 times faster than Gb LAN.

 

[toddos]

But if his drives can't even saturate a gigabit lan, who cares about USB3?

 

[cyberjock]

Sorry, I read what you said backwards. I don't know about your servers, but all of mine do over 300MB/sec when I do dd tests. One does almost 800MB/sec. My bottlenecks are definitely the NICs. When I need to copy very large files on my servers I always do it from the command line. I get more than 3x the speed.

 

[deathevor]

To toddos:

True. But what if you simultaneously write and/or read from two (or more) different drives in NAS server?
The gigabit network is just a bit faster than single drive bandwidth. And actually not always.


So why not to just to have USB3 option - it looks like very cheap connection way. And definitely would eliminate your connection from "the weakest link" list.

 

[cyberjock]

It's a hardware issue mostly. USB3 doesn't really allow for transfers in the method you are thinking. The USB cable I saw has a small box in the middle that negotiates the communications between the 2 machines. It's not a direct connect in the electrical sense.

So first, you'd need hardware that can support what you want, then drivers to make it happen. I wouldn't expect that ever from FreeBSD. As I said, even in Windows it was flaky and had problems. I've only seen them made by very small no-name brands, and the cables were crazy expensive(over $100 for the USB2 version!)

I just can't see them ever being mainstream.. Especially since I'm expecting 10Gb to be much more prevalent in the next 24 months.

 

[deathevor]

I always do it from the command line. I get more than 3x the speed.

Interested in this.
Command line in Windows?
And is it for copying from/to server?
Via what connection?

Just for some cases it might be useful to write small app that starts command line copying.

 

[cyberjock]

No, I copy using SSH. I SSH into the server and use cp.

 

[deathevor]

Thanks. Will check that.

 

[cyberjock]

Someone messaged me earlier about this so I think I should clarify. I was referring to copying files that are on my server to another location on my server. In particular, commands such as "cp /mnt/tank/file1 /mnt/tank/file2". When I'm not trying to copy them to another physical location I log into the machine via SSH or go to the machine locally.

Sometimes, when I need to delete huge amounts of files(10k+) I will sometimes run the delete commands locally as it can be much faster than deleting over CIFS.

Hopefully you didn't get the impression I was able to copy at 300+MB/sec over Gb. That's physically impossible.

 

[deathevor]

Yeah, I was a bit surprised with speeds. But think it is possible.
First of all double NIC connection should give hopefully 2 Gigabits (HAven't checked, just theory).
And also fiber optic NIC exists - which is 10 Gigabits.

In near future hopefully to get Thunderbolt support which is already on the "to do list" for FreeBSD http://wiki.freebsd.org/FreeBSD10
And it's also 10Gbps.

So theoretically you could have those speeds.

 

[cyberjock]

First of all double NIC connection should give hopefully 2 Gigabits (HAven't checked, just theory).

Nope. it doesn't work that way. Any transfer is limited to the speed of 1 link. If you have 1 Gb link its 1Gb. If you have 10x1Gb links its still 1Gb.

 

[deathevor]

True. I wasn't sure about this one.

Thought it could reorder packets into two connections. Unfortunately it doesn't.
Just read it on freenas wiki.

Damn.