This might be a daft idea but...

I'm setting up a second unraid server on an unused laptop to run some basic services. This is much lower powered than my main unraid server so I don't need to worry about leaving it on all the time. The main one has many disks, better CPU & ram and will still be used for some VM's, bigger protected storage and backups.

I was thinking about faster networking between the two because I'm limited by the 1gb port on the laptop. I remember a very long time ago networking two windows PCs using a firewire cable that was configured as a network, and wondered if I could do the same with USB3 and make a direct attachment between the two machines as they're physically close together. (This would be in addition to them both going to the switch).

Some research has revealed some usb cables with a device in the middle which refer to themselves as "Windows Easy Transfer Cable". Searching Amazon, this is an example (not currently available for me, but something similar might be). https://www.amazon.com/Plugable-Transfer-Thunderbolt-Software-Migration/dp/B0BGRVS51T/

So, would this sort of cable present itself as an ethernet adaptor in both servers that could then be configured to use as a fast sync / fileshare connection? Would a plain usb cable do the same thing (USB-A or USB-C) ?  It seems this could be a very cheap way to get fast networking between two machines and only using a USB port.

 

Nice idea but I have a feeling it will not work because Unraid does not support the required protocols (I would love to be  proved wrong though). 

 

Even if it does not work now maybe someone could work out what Limetech needs to add to Unraid to make it possible,

Thanks for replying.

Not sure what the risks are of just plugging in a plain cable and seeing what's shown. Obviously nothing should go wrong, but I don't want to trash two servers if they both try to send power when they shouldn't!

Might try to find some donor machines to try with first off to check that nothing bad happens even if the hardware and software will be completely different. I just don't want any of the magic smoke to come out of the chips because they won't work the same after that.