Client performance issues when connected to the network.

[morganw]

We moved our Apple computers onto the main network using some purchased software to authenticate via active directory. The home folders are on a windows file server that is in the same physical location as the old mac server that used to store them.
When using the macs sometimes they will either have slow periods or lockup for a period of time, even when logged on a local user account rather than a network one.

Has anyone got any experience of Apple clients connected to their network (ours is setup flat with everything in one subnet)?

I've changed the tcp parameter "delayed_ack" to 0 from 3 as people have written about this causing network performance issues, but my problems also exists for a local account so I'm looking more towards things running on the workstation.

I've disabled bonjour on one macbook as a test and since then I've been unable to get to have any slowdown or freeze issues, but I'm hoping that some can offer me specific advice or comment on similar issues before I spend hours disabling bonjour on everything. Also considering turning off spotlight indexing to see if that helps.

Any help appreciated.

[FireSpit]

Hi there,

Can I just ask why you purchased software to allow you to authenticate via AD when this is included in OS X?

Also, though this may/may not be of any help, and I'm aware this is an old thread, removing all forms of power source (iMacs and MacBook's/Pro's) and holding down the power button for 30 seconds will reset their network card, often this can be a major issue in locking up, especially when on AD.

Regards.

[morganw]

Active Directory Integration for Mac OS X

Mainly to use set system settings via GPO and not use an Apple file server (as they no longer make servers).

[slancaster]

Our network speed on the macs is also quite disappointing - any tips to speed things up would be great.

Here is how our macs (160 of them) are joined to our domain.


We currently have our xserve running snow leopard server which is piggy-backed onto a windows 2003 server which is our domain controller.
User authentication and home drives map fine - no problems really other than speed of browsing network shares (home drive/shared resources).

We have redirected our iMovie default capture location to be on the local hard disk of the mac - NOT the users home drive. This means more reliable and quicker capture but the downside being the user has to use the same mac each time to continue with their iMovie project.

Does anyone here use iMovie purely from the network? If so, is the speed and reliability acceptable?

cheers

[morganw]

The new iMovie doesn't allow you to store video clips on a network drive, only on local disks.
The old iMovie works with network storage but you have to be careful about bandwidth and you'll probably find that it only works on wired clients rather than wireless.

[slancaster]

Hi morgan, thanks for the reply.

looks like im staying local with iMovie then

Is there a new way to set up the re-direct of video capture and events in iMovie11? Or will my current "movies" alias work? Basically each mac has a "movies" folder on the route of the HDD and the save to path is defined using workgroup manager.

[morganw]

If you just set permissions on a scratch partition so that people can make folders but not delete other peoples stuff then everything will be fine. When you import or capture a video 'event' you choose the scrathc partition, you can either leave it there and use the same Mac later, or copy the 'events' to and from you home folder if you want to work somewhere else.