CIFS share transition to AFP

[PhotoNAS]

I know that a volume should only have one type of share associated with it or things go haywire.

I have been running CIFS for a while and I have read the pinned threads on how to optimize it. I also fixed all my macs so they don't throttle so badly by fixing that man in the middle attack with CIFS.

Still, the performance for CIFS isn't that great. If I have to move a few thousand files that are 1-2Mb it brings the system to a halt.

I am on 9.3 (For Crashplan reasons. Once someone gets a good docker setup and tutorial working with 9.10 I will upgrade)
My hardware is the FreeNAS Mini with WD Red drives.

I was thinking about moving to AFP as I never seem to use my linux or Windows machines to talk to the NAS anymore. I had a few questions regarding this migration.

1. What FS prep do I need to do when changing the share type. Any gotchas?
2. Is the expectation that the integration with AFP will be better than CIFS on a Mac? What is the optimal network file system connection?
3 . Any reason this is a bad idea and I should just leave well enough alone?

 

[nojohnny101]

I know that a volume should only have one type of share associated with it or things go haywire.

That's not true. I think you are confusing "volumes" with "datasets". You should not be sharing any one dataset with more than one sharing protocol at any given time. Worst: sharing a dataset through two different protocols at the same time. Better: sharing a dataset through two different protocols at different times with no overlap. Best: sharing a dataset with only one protocol.

1. What FS prep do I need to do when changing the share type. Any gotchas?

Not any that I'm aware of. I have done this successfully but I can't say I have tested switching extensively.

2. Is the expectation that the integration with AFP will be better than CIFS on a Mac? What is the optimal network file system connection?

No. This I did test, and I found the speed difference negligible with larger files. I share a dataset with AFP for remote mounting the photos library for my macs and SMB for everything else.

3 . Any reason this is a bad idea and I should just leave well enough alone?

If your system is "slowing to a crawl" in the scenario you described, you have an underlying issue that I will guess won't disappear if you switch protocols, but you could always try.

What are you hardware specs? You are plugged into your LAN correct? What kind of "tuneables" and "man-in-the-middle" changes are you referring to?

 

[PhotoNAS]

Sorry, dataset is what I meant. Not volume. Terminology flub.

1. What FS prep do I need to do when changing the share type. Any gotchas?

I was under the impression that I had seen posts where people had talked about doing some chmod/chown commands on a directory when making it AFP. Is that not necessary? Don't you get directory permission issues if you don't do that?

What are you hardware specs? You are plugged into your LAN correct? What kind of "tuneables" and "man-in-the-middle" changes are you referring to?

Hardware Specs are the FreeNAS Mini
http://www.storagereview.com/ixsystems_freenas_mini_review

I am doing this over wireless but I am certain that the latency is not the issue. I have plugged in hard-wired in order to confirm that is not the bottleneck. That didn't change anything. (For large files it makes a huge difference. But when transferring with a few large files is not when I have issues.)
I can see only one of the eight CPUs pegged when transferring files. I think this is a software issue with the SMB/CIFS implementation on FreeNAS. I have seen cyberjock mention this in passing on other posts. I guess my question is:
Does AFP have similar overhead to CIFS? If the abstraction layer written top of ZFS is lighter then my hope is that these bottlenecks are less likely.

Man and the middle stuff:
https://forum.promise.com/thread/fix-for-smb-sanlink-2/
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7565683?start=45&tstart=0
(OSX now requires signing for SMB)
(Perhaps also called the badlock attack?)

 

[SweetAndLow]

Test pool speed, test network speed.

You can also turn off case sensitivity to really speed up small file operations. Small file stuff is just slow and not much you can do about it.

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