Mac Only Network

[quaium]

We're about to setup a separate Mac only network which will have no connection with our existing Windows setup. I was wondering if anyone else had set something like this up and could offer some advice.

 

Our biggest worry is storage for user home directories. We are leaning towards a NAS device but researching this shows that there can be some issues. What would be the recommendation? Something that will work well and will allow set up of automated home folders and permissions via Profile Manager.

 

Any advice would be appreciated.

[FN-GM]

Why not just connect to your existing file servers?

[quaium]

Why not just connect to your existing file servers?

 

Good point... we tried this in the past and it was very slow, not sure why but maybe because it was an SMB share. We want a share that is either AFP or NFS based which I've heard is a little faster. Also, as this is a separate network we wanted to keep it away from our existing kit.

[FN-GM]

Not had problems in the past with SMB shares. I would look at fixing the core issue than a work around.

[quaium]

Not had problems in the past with SMB shares. I would look at fixing the core issue than a work around.

 

So even if we were to go with an SMB share would you recommend a NAS drive?

[pantscat]

I'd agree with @FN-GM - our Macs connect to our SMB shares absolutely fine with no issues. OSX 10.5 through to 10.8.

 

Check that your clients are up to date though - we did have some performance issues with some versions of 10.5.x and 10.7.x...

[FN-GM]

So even if we were to go with an SMB share would you recommend a NAS drive?

 

I would just use your existing file servers.

[pantscat]

Exactly... why make life complicated with more stuff to manage?

[quaium]

I would just use your existing file servers.

 

If that was the case we would be using storage on a SAN... could there be any issues with that and how would we mount it as a drive so the Mac Server can see it?

[pantscat]

Shouldn't be any issues.

My Macs access the files on my NetApp SAN with no issues.

 

Just bind your macs to AD and they'll connect to the home drive as specified in the user account properties.

[Sheridan]

We use AD and bind to the SMB shares and we did notice horrific delays. After much, much searching it all seemed to be on one Windows 2003 server. Since the users have migrated to a newer 2008 Server the performance is fine. We redirect ~tmp to the local drive for better performance and it seems to be fine.

 

Never did found out what was wrong with that 2003 server!

[psydii]

It really depends for what purpose you are getting macs?

 

If for DV and Music, then YOU MUST EDIT LOCALLY. FCP and Logic do not play nice with files across *ANY* network. Sure it might work ok... but sometimes it wont.

 

 

Our method involves software as part of the mac costs: Student use only one machine through out the year, they work locally, but have a connection to the Windows network through ExtremZ-IP to access their Windows home folder for Word docs etc. Magic Triangle for authentication. The macs backup to a large cheap firewire box attached to the mac server.

 

Pretty bullet proof. No complaints about performance, or files and folders or applications crashing in the two years it has been running. (10.6 FWIW, 10.7 was badly broken when we were implementing)

[Sheridan]

It really depends for what purpose you are getting macs?

 

If for DV and Music, then YOU MUST EDIT LOCALLY. FCP and Logic do not play nice with files across *ANY* network. Sure it might work ok... but sometimes it wont.

 

 

Our method involves software as part of the mac costs: Student use only one machine through out the year, they work locally, but have a connection to the Windows network through ExtremZ-IP to access their Windows home folder for Word docs etc. Magic Triangle for authentication. The macs backup to a large cheap firewire box attached to the mac server.

 

Pretty bullet proof. No complaints about performance, or files and folders or applications crashing in the two years it has been running. (10.6 FWIW, 10.7 was badly broken when we were implementing)

 

Yeah we also had issues with 10.7 and stuck with 10.6 in the end.

 

We run Sibelius and Logic on them and they're fine across the network - apart from the fact Sibelius takes longer to 'find' the license server on a mac than it does on a windows PC- but only for the first run of the day.

[iSteve]

Sounds like you need to check your DNS for forward and reverse lookups. There's no reason why a Mac should be any slower at accessing SMB shares or discovering Sib licence servers. Ours aren't.

[Sheridan]

Been through all that. Dns all working fine and everything resolves instantly with nslookup and dig etc. It only sib7 that has the problem and that's as buggy as hell anyway.

[mac_shinobi]

Sounds like you need to check your DNS for forward and reverse lookups. There's no reason why a Mac should be any slower at accessing SMB shares or discovering Sib licence servers. Ours aren't.

 

What do the macs use to discover sib servers? Bonjour or similar ? I did see mention of .Local causing issues with bonjour. Think thats correct

 

Also smb signing settings on the 2003 server may have caused the macs issues? ( just a thought )

[Sheridan]

The macs are OD/AD integrated so use Windows DNS, and the Sib7 server is on a windows 2008 server. Windows XP/7 machines on the same network segment hit the license server so quick you hardly notice it. Forward and backward DNS resolution is fine on the macs, routing has been checked and once the initial connection has been made it tends to connect a lot quicker.

 

I tried getting Avid to have a look at this, but it was a waste of breath!

[seawolf]

We're about to setup a separate Mac only network which will have no connection with our existing Windows setup. I was wondering if anyone else had set something like this up and could offer some advice.

 

Our biggest worry is storage for user home directories. We are leaning towards a NAS device but researching this shows that there can be some issues. What would be the recommendation? Something that will work well and will allow set up of automated home folders and permissions via Profile Manager.

 

Any advice would be appreciated.

 

I wouldn't recommend doing that. There is clearly something causing this problem on your network and you need to identify and fix that instead. We run more Macs than Windows clients on our "Windows" network and the Macs are faster at nearly everything, including logging in and connecting to shares.

 

1. Are you using a .local domain for your Windows network? If so, you should rename your domain to something else. That fixed us for good here. Like night and day.

 

2. Are you running 10.6 or 10.7/8? If 10.6 all I can see is we've seen dramatic performance improvements in 10.7 and 10.8 on our Windows network.

 

3. Don't use the magic triangle if you don't need to. We only have our Macs bound to the AD server. With configuration profiles you don't need an OD server. If you use something like Casper you can even apply MCX settings without an OD server as well.

 

The only other comment I would make is that AFP will always work better than SMB for Macs particular for searching. If you are going to use a separate storage device for the Macs than your Windows file servers, I would recommend building a FreeNAS box or buying one from ixsystems. They provide good native AFP support as well as SMB and NFS on top of a ZFS storage system. Very cost effective as well. Don't buy a cheap NAS box, they are mostly rubbish. You can build a really good FreeNAS box out of quality components for between $750-2,000 depending on how much storage and redundancy you need.

Edited June 15, 2013 by seawolf