Homelab on Thunderbolt 16 to 27 times faster networking
Showing off some speed tests since I decided to connect all the Mac Mini's in my rack via Thunderbolt.
I'm showing the Machine info with each test.
The setup is:
M2 Pro Mac Mini 32GB RAM 1Gbe and Thunderbolt 4(not shown) - It's the fileserver with 2 x 10 bay enclosures. It runs Orbstack for my docker containers and sync scripts to backup everything both on perm and remotely. It is running the container with OpenSpeedTest.
M4 Mac Mini 16GB RAM, 1Gbe and Thunderbolt 4 - this is the main media server, and has a 5 bay SSD array attached. As shown in the screenshots, it connects at 975Mb/s over ethernet, but downloads at 25Gb/s and Uploads at 17Gb/s over thunderbolt.
M4 Pro Mac Mini 48GB RAM, 10Gbe and Thunderbolt 5 - this is currently running LMStudio for sharing, as well as any compiling of projects. It also has some Apple Containers for Docker and VMWare for use as needed. As shown, it goes from 980MB/s on ethernet (M2 being only 1Gbe) to 27 Gb/s Download and 16 Gb/s upload.
I also included my M5 MacBook Air over wifi, with is also getting around 900 Mb/s internally.
So, I've set up the Mini's to talk to each other over thunderbolt, making backups / xfers at least 16 times faster, while still leaving the ethernet network so I can get back to them as needed. All for the price of about $20 for two decent thunderbolt cables.
Last note, I would probably retire the M2pro, but it actually has 1 more thunderbolt connection than the M4, which is coming in handy for all the storage.