How to connect the Apple Mac Pro to a 10GbE Network

​The current Mac Pro with its dual gigabit ethernet ports and now redundant six Thunderbolt 2 ports (after being replaced by Thunderbolt 3 on all new Apple computers) is still a powerful computer. Having access to shared high speed storage is difficult while it lacks a native 10Gb Ethernet port

10GbE networks are the future for shared high speed and large storage pools and this can be seen with Apple’s decision to include a 10Gb Ethernet port on the latest iMac Pro.

So in order to connect to high speed network storage we can attempt to bond the dual ethernet ports (not that great of a speed gain for the effort) or connect a thunderbolt 2 to 10GbE network adapter.

As mentioned Thunderbolt 2 has been replaced by Thunderbolt 3 and thus the technologies are almost passing each other by with manufacturers no longer actively working on new Thunderbolt 2 devices and focusing on the newer “better” Thunderbolt 3. All the while 10GbE is gaining support and availability.

As such the only real option to solve this equation is the AKiTiO Thunder2 Thunderbolt to 10G Network Adapter here.

Once drivers have been installed and the device connected to a 10GbE capable switch we are in business:

​To compare speeds we have ~338 MB/s Write and 208 MB/s Read on a Thunderbolt 2 connected Promise 2 DAS storage device in RAID 5:

​Finally the result we are after with the Mac Pro connected via 10Gb Ethernet to a Synology DS1817+ NAS in RAID 10 for ~462 MB/s Write and 834 MB/s Read: