I currently have a late 2012 mac mini with 2x 4TB external USB3.0 drives. I'm looking to step up to a 5 or more drive external enclosure that supports raid. Just wondering if it'd be smarter to go thunderbolt and keep it DAS or move to a NAS setup instead? If I kept it DAS, would adding the gigabit ethernet adapter and multiplexing (is that the correct term?) the two connections help if I was serving a lot over the network? Thanks.
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NAS vs DAS?
- Thread starter HiQ
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Your switches need to support network trunking for that to be a viable option. Even so, as far as I know, each single network connection to the server (or NAS for that matter) will only be able to use one of the network interfaces at a time, so a trunk is primarily a benefit from a fault tolerance standpoint unless you make several parallel connections to the server.
Other than that I agree with the previous poster: You'll need to spend some serious cash on a NAS for it to be comparable to a Mac Mini in computing power, and even so it will be more limited in terms of available services (unless you roll your own).
Go for NAS, they are just better at serving data.
They are independent of any other hardware, NAS can generally server data to other things faster than DAS, the redundancy is far better and they don't impact the performance of any connecting device.
They are independent of any other hardware, NAS can generally server data to other things faster than DAS, the redundancy is far better and they don't impact the performance of any connecting device.
Each have their pros and cons as others have stated. I'm a fan of dedicated appliances whether they are a NAS or a server. I don't like a system acting as a server when it's also being used as a workstation, particularly when multiple users are accessing the server.
All that aside, what is your backup plan for that large an array? Raid is not a backup solution. You need another way to insure the safety of your data.