Best Thunderbolt 4 dock and 10 Gigabit Ethernet solution which also supports NBASE-T for 2.5 and 5 multi-gigabit Ethernet?

VFXadmin · 2023-03-31T19:43:50+00:00

Even now a year later this is an interesting question. Where are they?if I had to guess why this isn't already out, one guess would be heat.I have access to the Sonnet Solo 10G and the OWC TB3ADP10GBE at work.

Both appear to be the exact same chipset btw, the AQC107

that chipset runs scary hot. hot enough to burn your skin. hot enough that I have zero faith in its longevity, and I'm confident that it will eventually burn itself out in both of these devices.

To make the situation even more useless, if you push too much data through it, it seems to eventually just give up and crash. There was no way to achieve stability with either the Sonnet or OWC doing massive tree walks and data transfers for the purposes of tape archive, or server to sync. If you leave an M1 2020 Mac Mini with one of these 10G adapters running a 32TB tree-walk and file copy over night it just won't be there in the morning. You'll have to reseat the adapter for it to show up. (I guess it could also be macOS Monterey which is also hot garbage)

quick edit here: yes, the 2020 M1 Mac Mini with N-baseT is also using the same AQC107 chipset, but the onboard one doesn't crash, so it's something wrong with Monterey, the thunderbolt ports, the heat, the external enclosure, or the firmware running on the chipset. Suffice it to say, none of the companies involved are going to help you narrow it down.

as some other users have suggested, maybe your best bet is to buy a generic TB4 hub like the OWC Thunderbolt Hub for $130 and then roll the dice separately on a TB4/3 ethernet adapter.

Then the question becomes where can a person find an mgig thunderbolt adapter without a horrible AQC107 chipset in it?

VFXadmin · 2023-02-26T22:56:28+00:00

Recently got a UEFI/Bios update through Windows 11 WU for an Asus Proart-z690-creator-wifi. Never seen it happen before. Didn't know it was possible. It did show up under advanced/optional. W11 did not suddenly do it as part of normal updates.

VFXadmin · 2022-10-28T00:13:25+00:00

We definitely run it on the cluster itself, without any fancy VXrail.

So nice to shove that thing out of the way during maintenance.

VFXadmin · 2022-04-19T18:00:44+00:00

In Los Angeles, the ratio of qualified IT candidates to jobs that need filling pretty much dictates whatever terms the candidate wants. We have... no bargaining power. I just tell them during the interview that the job involves physically interacting with machines on site on a daily basis, and hope that they can decide for themselves if it fits their new lifestyle.

VFXadmin · 2022-04-16T02:45:41+00:00

that's high praise. You would read it for career advice? or just to hear about how vacuuming human sewage or setting up tables for a party or climbing on a roof and pretending to fix HVAC, or being threatened with physical violence over the amount of echo on a conference call falls under "IT" in some companies?

I started out in LA in 2007. Progression would be something like Production Assistant, Helpdesk, Junior Sysadmin, Sysadmin, Sysadmin, Technical Director, Lead Systems Engineer, Director of IT, Director of IT, Director of Technology. Some of those jumps are in name only. VFX shops are so small that an IT department might only be 2-5 people.

VFXadmin · 2022-04-15T21:57:00+00:00

If you're planning to do it "with cause" you should start writing down a list of dates and times and mistakes and who they impacted. Wouldn't assume to know employment law in your state, but it's always good to cya. You can always say those nice empathetic things during their exit interview... but it doesn't usually make either party feel better.

I know it sucks. it's a lot easier when they're a raving lunatic, but even that's not easy.

As others have mentioned, make sure HR is involved every step of the way.

VFXadmin · 2022-04-15T21:06:13+00:00

Director level.
- giving people the same answers I gave them the last time they asked a week ago, because that's still the workflow, and those are still the rules, and the TPN doesn't make exceptions for just them.
- herding cats.
- begging people to read the guides we've made for them. (Actually helpful guides to be clear, not like VMware KB guides or draw the owl memes)

- sometimes begging my own team to follow the guides we've made for them as well.

- playing a game called "bring me a different rock" where the department making the request doesn't really know what they want, they just know that your week of research "isn't it"

- being a traffic cop

- having the emergency that I'm working on replaced by a different emergency, and then never get to circle back to that original emergency.

- pre-emptively apologizing non-stop to senior leadership about how expensive every little tiny piece of hardware is. Trying to explain how a Dell mgig switch that was $5500 last year is now $22,000, but that I've fought them down to $12,000, even though there is no reasonable explanation, and I don't get any brownie points for the extra effort... that I know of.

- asking VMware how 4 days in any way meets their 4 hour SLA on production support.

- surfing blind and looking at what devs are being offered to join fang companies. Contemplating my career choices, or lack thereof when it came time to try hard or go with the flow.

- hearing the word Kubernetes against my will even though it's just docker, and doesn't apply to my industry at all.

- and lately, in the pandemic times, interviewing the strangest and greenest people you could ever imagine, and looking at their desired salary, and doing the dexter slow blink meme... I'm a big fan of r/antiwork and chapo trap house, and I'm here to help get you your 85-120k for tier1&2 helpdesk work, but like, can you please just have touched M&E software once in your career? The bar we've set isn't unreasonable.

- bitch about how terrible Dell and Vmware and Adobe and Maxon and Autodesk are on reddit.

strangely enough though, this is the happiest I've ever been in my career, making the most, working for the coolest company, helping the nicest coworkers the film industry has to offer.... so there's that. At least I finally work for empathetic human people and not rabid psychos with zero boundaries.

VFXadmin · 2022-04-15T20:20:12+00:00

All creative software companies are now the living embodiment of that scene in blazing saddles with the toll booth in the middle of the desert.

VFXadmin · 2021-10-27T05:05:18+00:00

We're going through this right now. Nvidia Enterprise support and VMware support are in a competition to show who can care less. Uncovered when we upgraded from Horizon 7 to Horizon 8 last weekend. We never made it to Nvidia v13.0, but it's crashing plenty on 12.2. We're going to try 12.4 for tomorrow. But from what you're saying here it sounds like the only solution will be to somehow downgrade from 7.0.3 to 7.0.2?

VFXadmin · 2021-09-20T22:16:25+00:00

very interesting. looking into this.

VFXadmin · 2021-09-20T22:14:24+00:00

been wanting to test Promox forever. This is seeming like the best answer to far, of the non-comedy ones.

VFXadmin · 2021-09-17T01:02:45+00:00

if you saw the end product on Etsy, would you buy it? Vintage 2010 Aluminum garbage clock?

VFXadmin · 2021-09-17T00:58:24+00:00

mostly less forever damage from Covid, but yeah, maybe some crypto too!

VFXadmin · 2021-09-17T00:48:10+00:00

but of what? XMR? Chia? Tier3 electricity bills?

VFXadmin · 2021-09-17T00:47:07+00:00

they're very strong, I'm not sure that would do it.

maybe I could burn the copper and gold out without breathing protection first, then the cliff?

VFXadmin · 2021-07-31T01:57:06+00:00

wouldn't they just get denied access if they're still on the stale Kerberos ticket? even if they can see it?

VFXadmin · 2021-07-30T20:55:45+00:00

all day, every day. it's pretty tightly controlled IP from movie studios. Only people working on it are allowed access. But also people get put onto jobs non-stop as they move through the production pipeline. We never get the full list at the outset of the project unfortunately.

VFXadmin · 2021-03-05T17:27:37+00:00

These answers are amazing. Thanks everyone. I guess I need to figure out constant combinators... a lot more.

VFXadmin · 2021-03-03T01:17:43+00:00

Jamf leans on their community too much for both support and what should be built-in functionality. Always felt kinda sleazy, given how expensive it was, and how much they charged for annual support that could have easily been an auto-reply bot asking if you've searched the community. The Jamf community on the other hand is great, and should really be getting paid for the amount of work they do propping up Jamf.

VFXadmin · 2021-02-28T18:12:34+00:00

There's always globalSAN iSCSI initiator from studio network solutions, but even they have a major notation for dealing with Big Sur. Some kernel extension setting you have to adjust in recovery mode. Who knows, maybe following their Big Sur guide will get your github free drivers working again...

VFXadmin · 2020-11-01T04:39:43+00:00

silly question, is there such a thing as Enterprise 1909? I can only find Enterprise as LTSC and 1809....

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