Network filesharing sharing..what are you using?

[Ben_sn]

This community is the largest collection on Mac admins and I need your advice..please.
I inherited a problem last year and with each OSX upgrade it has got worse.
Currently we use Linux file server running samba. Everyday I have to restore files (Excel/Word mostly) that become corrupted.

As the subject says..what have you used in past or what are you currently using in your current environment as a networked fileserver?

I am not looking for options based on certain criteria, just a proven implementation for now. Thanks in advance.

[ShaunRMiller83]

We leverage Grouplogic Extreme-Z IP on Windows file servers VMs.

Grouplogic Extreme-Z IP basically allows you mount network shares via AFP from a windows server.

[Ben_sn]

@ShaunM9483
I have heard of them. What has been your experience with their support?

Does anyone else have experience with Extreme-Z IP? Please share your experience.

And if you have any other alternatives please do not hesitate to respond.

[ShaunRMiller83]

@Ben_sn

Overall our EZip experience has been very positive. We've been using the product since v5 and it has come a long way. A few things we have noticed when using v8. Spotlight searching of Network Shares can be problematic and work sporadically. Based on conversations I've had with there technical support v8 installs need to spotlight search network volumes as high up on the drive as possible. Which for us is not the ideal and have added EasyFind to self service until we are entirely on v9.

We have begun deploying Ezip v9 and most (if not all of these issues) have been address. They now deploy an index method that allows significantly better spotlight finder searching across network volumes at any level of the share.

From a product support perspective they are very responsive and seem to want to help and escalate when needed.

I hope this helps
Shaun

[Ben_sn]

@ShaunM9483
Your response definitely helps.
What version of Windows Server are you running?
What directory service are you using?
How many users connect to the AFP shares?

Currently I need to support up to 75 users in a mac only environment.

[ShaunRMiller83]

@Ben_sn

We are running Windows Server 2008 R2 (current on patches) for EZip v8 and Windows Server 2012 R2 (Current on Patches) for v9 We use AD as our directory service
We have a lot of users connecting to various AFP shares. (estimating 50 - 150 users per server)

That said if it's only 75 users the cost of the app may not support the functionality benefits. Acronis f/k/a Grouplogic licenses by client. My recommendation would be that they offer a 30 day full function trial if you have a lab space try setting it up a Windows File server with ezip in the lab and trying it out for yourself.

We choose this route because we need something enterprise class that could support the ability to scale up.

Shaun

[Ben_sn]

@ShaunM9483][/url
I will take your advice and install the trial when I get a chance. The cost of 100 clients is just about what we pay Apple for a new 15"macbookpro w/retina and 27"tb display. If it solves the issues than I would pay even more..but don't tell Acronis I said that.

I would like to here some alternatives that others are using. If there is anything you are aware of please let me know. Since its an all mac environment, I guess OSX server is an option, but than I would need some attached storage (thunderbolt, firewire, USB3.0) for the data.

Would be nice if Apple still used Samba's SMB..we never had issues back then.

[ShaunRMiller83]

I agree Apple should have left well enough alone and kept Samba's SMB.

On a related note this is certainly not enterprise or production friendly solution but there is a method to override Apple implementation of SMB in favor of Samba SMB.

I followed the method outlined in the linked post and it seems to be running well. I wouldn't implement this in production but worth taking a look at.

https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/discussion.html?id=13148

[RobertHammen]

The reason why Apple has "reinvented the wheel" and moved away from Samba is not technical. It has to do with the GPL v3 license agreement. Apple cannot meet the terms of this agreement so they legally cannot go beyond the GPL v2.x license agreement versions. This is why so many open-source components in OS X are either old or rewritten (i.e. SMBX).

Back to the original question, I've used EZIP in a previous life and the product and the support were both very, very good. Pricetag is not cheap is the only downside. Your other alternative (if Spotlight is truly important to you) are computers running OS X Server. I'd stay far away from NAS devices...

[Ben_sn]

Thanks guys..now we are getting somewhere.

@ShaunM9483
Been there..done that.

@RobertHammen
I tried to bite my tongue, but its hard. Don't want to go off-topic so lets just say Apple chose the path of least resistance and the consequences may hit home some day..but nevermind..back on-topic

Spotlight is not important to the staff. We have a strict folder structure and staff know where to locate the files they need.

What would you guys (or anyone reading) suggest for attached storage if I went the OS X Server route?

[mpermann]

@RobertHammen, I'm curious why you would stay far away from NAS devices?

[calumhunter]

netatalk on linux
samba on linux
smb on win2k8 and win2k12
extremez-ip
netapp

I've used them all, properly configured they all work pretty well. some configs have their some quirks. But I've never had file corruption issues.

[RobertHammen]

@mpermann I've been burned with NASes and the SMB stack changes Apple has made with Lion->Mountain Lion->Mavericks->Yosemite. At the mercy of the NAS vendor to get their stuff fixed. I mean, it may be OK for home users or very small businesses, but for larger orgs with mission-critical needs, I tend to use/recommend either OS X Server (if appropriate) or Windows Server 2008R2 or 2012, perhaps with SMB, perhaps with EZIP.

@Ben_sn I use and like the Promise Pegasus/Pegasus2 Thunderbolt RAIDs. Decent performance and set-it-and-forget it configuration (unless you lose a drive). Just trust me when I tell you to stay far, far away from Drobo.

[Ben_sn]

Does anyone know of any other forums of IRC channels where mac admins gather and discuss this sort of topic?

@calumhunter
when you had success with samba (or even smb) what version os OS X were the clients running?
I suppose you cannot share your smb.conf of a "properly configured" setup for your organization?..would love to see it. I have set up the most basic of samba3/4 configs and have nothing but issues with the Mac clients..cannot reproduce any of them on windows clients. http://macsmbissues.com/

@RobertHammen
Thanks again. Those are the type of answers I am looking for. Just curious though, if the NAS device worked pre-Lion, than why is it the vendors responsibility to fix something that Apple borked?

[RobertHammen]

@Ben_sn][/url check out the fine folks on IRC at ##osx-server. That and this forum are the two premier sources of Mac management (along with @rtrouton][/url's derflounder.wordpress.com, @gregneagle][/url's managingosx.wordpress.com, @Bruienne][/url's enterprisemac.bruienne.com afp548.com et. al.)

As of Lion, Apple stopped using Samba and uses their own SMBX stack and this broke a lot of things with NASes. Yes, you could wait for Apple to resolve the problems, or your NAS vendor. The problem is that you are waiting, and you are stuck. Similar stories have happened with Mavericks (SMB2) and Yosemite (SMB3) changes. I tend to shy away for business networks - if it's your home media server, say, it's less of a big deal.

[Ben_sn]

What about NFS..any success stories, anyone?

@RobertHammen
Agreed..and we have stuck waiting long enough for a fix from Apple, but its pretty clear where their priorities are these days.

[calumhunter]

@Ben_sn Sorry forgot about this thread.
Don't have the configs available - no longer have access to those sites. But from memory there was nothing really special. I'm old school so I still setup the .TemporaryItems folders for Office.

a quick glance of this looks like it explains the .TemporaryItems folder issues. http://prowiki.isc-csg.upenn.edu/wiki/MS_Office_and_Network_Volumes

That was with Win2k8 and whatever version of SMB was installed by yum on CentOS6.4 a fair while back.

Must say I haven't noticed the issue with Win2k12 and Office14.4+ but we are also using DFS in this setup. not sure if that helps.

NFS, sure why not, but its machine based authentication, as you you give machine with IP address x.x.x.x access to the share, its not user based so it depends on your requirements.

I wouldn't be moving to NFS to solve your issues. Depending on your organisation size, number of file shares etc etc you might be better off with ExtremeZ-IP on your Windows servers.

Or maybe you just tell your users to drag the files off the file share, work on them locally and then put them back to the fileshare

[Apfelpom]

We are using Helios UB EtherShare running on Solaris (first SPARC then X86), since 15 years. Even quite expensive, it's a rock solid File-Sharing solution for multiple enterprise OSs and rack hardware. Their new product "Universal Fileserver" combines AFP and SMB sharing for Mac and Windows clients, while keeping system specific metadata. http://www.helios.de/start.html

Combined with Archiware PresSTORE 5 we are using data synchronisation of File-Sharing volumes across network and different platforms. Actually from Solaris/ZFS to OSX/HFS+ without compatibility issues. http://www.archiware.com/

Both software are rock solid german handcrafted code ;-), with responsive and good support (especially for Archiware). They are worth a look.

Netatalk is the open source AFP file sharing solution used in all NAS systems. Because of a paid support plan, plenty of NAS hardware companies didn't implement the AFP 3.x compatible builds in time. Nevertheless, the main programmer moved to the samba project to make SAMBA 4.x running for OS X clients using SMB... I'm not sure it's the good solution for your crashing server, as SAMBA and OS X has a work in progress status. Apple could implement new SMB-features in their next OS, it could be a great step for file sharing in cross platform environment!
http://www.netafp.com/sernet-expands-apple-support-netatalk-and-samba-merge-1230/

[Ben_sn]

I decided to compile the netatalk on a spare linux box..seems to work well for me, but maybe not so well when rolled out to a production environment with many users.

afpd 3.1.7 - Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) daemon of Netatalk

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software
Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later
version. Please see the file COPYING for further information and details.

afpd has been compiled with support for these features:

AFP versions: 2.2 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 CNID backends: dbd last tdb mysql Zeroconf support: Avahi TCP wrappers support: Yes Quota support: Yes Admin group support: Yes Valid shell checks: Yes cracklib support: Yes EA support: ad | sys ACL support: Yes LDAP support: Yes D-Bus support: Yes Spotlight support: Yes DTrace probes: Yes

afp.conf: /usr/local/etc/afp.conf extmap.conf: /usr/local/etc/extmap.conf state directory: /usr/local/var/netatalk/ afp_signature.conf: /usr/local/var/netatalk/afp_signature.conf afp_voluuid.conf: /usr/local/var/netatalk/afp_voluuid.conf UAM search path: /usr/local/lib/netatalk// Server messages path: /usr/local/var/netatalk/msg/

@calumhunter
Its Excel that encounters 99% of the issues..and the .TemporaryItems is specific to Word.

So was win2k8 just a DC with AD and CentOS was doing the sharing? If so why not just share with the win2k8?

I would like to hear more about your current setup with win2k12. I have a test win2k12 server setup (nothing but SMB3.0 sharing..no AD, etc.) and I can recreate issues fairly easy. It is running as a guest VM in another linux box.

So another check for extremez-ip. You have to wonder how a product can survive this long since OS X has had SMB support for quite some time now..

Asking the users to work locally is not good. Consider a user pulling a file down and editing, then putting it back on the server. But in the meantime another user pulled the same file down and made edits, then put the file back on the server before the first user.

@Apfelpom
Thanks. This is exactly the type of response I was looking for when starting this discussion.
It does not matter how well Samba is developed. In OS X 10.6 there was never an issue when Apple used Samba's SMB stack, but now that they develop it in-house many issues have started..just search Google.

[calumhunter]

@Ben_sn
Hmm i'm not sure i would say the .TemporaryItems is specific to Word.
No, 2k8 was the SMB file server, there were other 2k8 servers doing DC duties. Yes using AD, macs bound, users logging in with AD accounts, local home directories, but accessing their H drives on the mac via the AD Plugin automatic mounting of their home directory - ie typical school environment with shared lab computers. No Centos in this environment.

Other environments, ie smallish corporates where a fileserver was required, but no real budget for a WinServer licence, I've set up CentOS or Ubuntu with either samba or netatalk, sometimes both. samba for a couple PC's that need it and then netatalk for the macs. has been pretty sweet.

another environ with win2k12 is another school, ie shared lab type thing. win2k12 doing the file sharing over smb, students access their home dirs over smb

I guess if what your problem is that you have a file in a central shared area, being accessed from multiple machines is giving you issues, i'm not really surprised by this. I would suggest if this is your use case, then a version control system might be a better option - sharepoint for example is probably the right way to do this type of work with a shared repository of files.

[Ben_sn]

@calumhunter
I cannot get excel to create the .TemporaryItems directory..what other (office) app creates them?

You nailed it..that is exactly the issue. All of our shared volumes are being accessed by more than one user. We cant have every user sync every file that they have access to. They would run out of space pretty quick and it would be a waste of it.

I think if netatalk does not work, then extremez-ip is the only other possible solution for my situation.

[calumhunter]

@Ben_sn
No you need to manually create the .TemporaryItems directory yourself, give it 777 permissions.
If you read the article i linked it explains this, also it must exist as the root of the fileshare the user has mounted.

I'm not sure that ExtremeZ-IP will fix your issues, maybe.

Else I'd recommend using MS Sharepoint or similar for these types of files that need to be accessed and edited by multiple people

[Ben_sn]

@calumhunter
Of course, but my point was that Excel does not automatically create a .TemporaryItems folder (Word does almost instantly), so I assumed Excel did not use that folder at all.