Realistic MM w/ RAID 1+0 File Server Limits

[jscooper22]

Hi,

We've been a Mac shop since before I came on board, but the death of XServe and the lingering apparent demise of any sort of serious server functionality is leaving me to begin planning for the dreaded W-word for my data center. Question now is how long do I have? I moved an office of ~45 users from a 10.6.8 xServe to a 10.11 MM with a Promise RAID 1+0 a couple years ago. We also authenticate to an AD 2012r2 and have WRD for a couple business apps that simply do not exist on Mac.

The server does nothing else, just an SMB file server.

But now we're getting closer to 60 users and I'm concerned, even if I find the magical combination off nsmb.conf and other settings, my server simply will not support them. Notwithstanding Tim Cook's comments about the "importance" of MM moving forward and this spring's "please don't leave us, business customers" press gathering, I'm worried.

I'm sure I'm not the only one in this boat, but would love to hear if anyone else has experience trying to stretch it to five or six dozen without tanking performance and how you did it.

Thanks,

Jeff

 

[Mikael H]

You should perform some benchmarking on your file server to get some performance numbers on a) total throughput and b) I/O operations per second, in different use cases (sequential; random with a strong focus on reads, random with a strong focus on writes).
Then monitor your current workload and compare the numbers, which should give you the information you need to do a rough estimate of your hardware needs.

With hardware that's common for small-to-medium-sized business, you probably want to scale out rather than up: You will hit limits for what a single machine can serve across a single network interface long before you hit your maximum throughput values for a large mechanical (or fast SSD-based) RAID10 set. It's better, then, to serve different file shares from different servers if you want to stay with prosumer/SMB-level hardware.


If you want to up your game a bit, an alternative to the W-word are the L- or F-words. You can set up seriously powerful file servers running a Linux-based server OS, or FreeBSD or one of its derivatives (FreeNAS being an obvious candidate to test). That way you keep the Unix-like workflow under the hood, yet can stay clear of both Apple's requirement of running on Apple hardware, and of Microsoft's jungle of licensing requirements.
Then you can also purchase regular server hardware which may give better bang-for-the-buck than ThunderBolt based disk cabinets. With some additional work this also opens up for functionality you otherwise see in much higher-end enterprise SAN solutions: With multiple cache-tiers (RAM + SSD), you can get strong performance despite having a majority of your storage on mechanical drives. With storage snapshots and replication, it's possible to - at some cost - minimize downtime in case of catastrophic hardware failure. At some point all of this will require enhancements to other infrastructure in your company to shine, though, so it's best to start by doing some sort of cost/benefit calculation.

 

[hobowankenobi]

Have to agree...time to move on.

I have been using Mac OS Server since before OS X, so if anybody wanted it to flourish, it would be me. Not really a nix guy, I like the big shiny buttons as much as anybody. Done some Win server over the years too, but it never really made me want to be a Win admin. Long story short: Apple is slowly but steadily leaving the server market.

We could talk for days about why and what opportunities they missed, but it is now clear—as of 10.13—that the end is near, at least for the traditional server functions, like file sharing.

Not wanting to go to full retar...ahem, Windows, I am going Synology. Lots to like: Linux robustness, rugged file system, loads of features and options, great Apple/AFP/Time Machine support, low overall cost, lots of form factors from tiny to full enterprise gear, multiple NICs, redundant power supplies, and on and on.

Oh, and did I mention big shiny buttons? A mature GUI through a web interface, and lots of compelling features Apple never offered. Outside of MDM and NetBoot, a very capable server to consider.

And, bonus, they are rolling out VM support too. Pretty compelling hardware.

There are other options too. Some more robust, some more simplified for SOHO or prosumer. I think Synology has hit the sweet spot for small to medium orgs that don't want to go all in for Win Server, AD, and the whole MS enchilada. Point is, even with the soon-to-be death of Mac servers, we still have non-Windows options, and lots of them.

Even if Apple was improving rather than stripping features out of Server...I would be still be tempted to leave, as a MM and external storage is still not anywhere close to enterprise grade.

 

[Mikael H]

I am going Synology.

Having used Synology 10 and 12 bay machines for backup storage, I would advise against it for production systems. Out of six machines we bought, four developed issues with recognizing drives in singular bays, and one literally killed several drives.
If you have the time to take a storage system out of production for a few days for warranty work then it might not be that bad. Personally, I will never purchase anything but real servers with on-site warranty again.

 

[hobowankenobi]

Having used Synology 10 and 12 bay machines for backup storage, I would advise against it for production systems. Out of six machines we bought, four developed issues with recognizing drives in singular bays, and one literally killed several drives.
If you have the time to take a storage system out of production for a few days for warranty work then it might not be that bad. Personally, I will never purchase anything but real servers with on-site warranty again.

Thanks for the heads up. A fair point. Brands like Synology are on the low end of the scale, with most of their gear decidedly NOT enterprise rated.

MM is in the same boat though, perhaps worse in the sense that they are so hard to work on. Yes, more reliable than the average PC, but still not close to enterprise, nor anything like on-site warranty repair.

Again, to be fair, the cost of the true enterprise boxes and on-site warranty is very steep. Many small orgs won't/can't do it. I know years ago what my employer paid for an IBM SAN and blade box, plus warranty. Very pricy. Not in the same ball park as a MM + storage for this discussion. And when that support was needed, the tech they sent out had never seen a blade or SAN. He had only worked on AS400 or old school main frames, so we still walked him through everything. Could have done it ourselves.

I have worked on a few Synology boxes over the years, and none have eaten drives or had any other hardware issues. Hopefully it was a design/part/manufacturing flaw of a specific model or production run. Time will tell. Just about every brand has the occasional lemon model or component. I will be k

All that to say...there are other options (non-enterprise included) to MM and MacOS Server besides Win Server. Count your blessings if you can spec out and purchase top notch enterprise gear; for the rest of us, the challenge is what to buy on a very limited budget.

 

[Mikael H]

Thanks for the heads up. A fair point. Brands like Synology are on the low end of the scale, with most of their gear decidedly NOT enterprise rated.

MM is in the same boat though, perhaps worse in the sense that they are so hard to work on. Yes, more reliable than the average PC, but still not close to enterprise, nor anything like on-site warranty repair.

Again, to be fair, the cost of the true enterprise boxes and on-site warranty is very steep. Many small orgs won't/can't do it. I know years ago what my employer paid for an IBM SAN and blade box, plus warranty. Very pricy. Not in the same ball park as a MM + storage for this discussion. And when that support was needed, the tech they sent out had never seen a blade or SAN. He had only worked on AS400 or old school main frames, so we still walked him through everything. Could have done it ourselves.

I have worked on a few Synology boxes over the years, and none have eaten drives or had any other hardware issues. Hopefully it was a design/part/manufacturing flaw of a specific model or production run. Time will tell. Just about every brand has the occasional lemon model or component. I will be k

All that to say...there are other options (non-enterprise included) to MM and MacOS Server besides Win Server. Count your blessings if you can spec out and purchase top notch enterprise gear; for the rest of us, the challenge is what to buy on a very limited budget.

No, you’re entirely right: I wouldn’t recommend a small business to invest in an actual SAN with all that choice entails. Not only do you have to pay for hardware, licenses and support, but you also have to have the rest of the infrastructure on par with the required tech, and soon you’re looking at a full-time job just managing the stuff.

But if you’re willing to deal with a less beautiful interface than Synology’s, even relatively cheap servers can be fitted with hardware that’s a lot more robust than what Synology uses, and covered with next-day delivery of the most common parts. For a 10-12 disk setup, the drives will likely still be more expensive than the actual machine. As I said in my first post, a regular file server doesn’t have to be able to serve data much faster than its network card allows it to; it’s better to spend the money on splitting the file shares across multiple servers to speed up the individual workloads. Of course, in that case, the immediate future is likely well covered by additional Mac Minis and DAS cabinets. Just make sure backup routines are good enough for your needs - that too is an often-neglected cost in smaller companies. In 3-5 years, the machines will be fully written off, and new investments can be planned according to the needs at that point.

 

[Geeky Chimp]

We used to originally run Windows and Windows Server and made the wholesale switch to Apple. Our first tryout kit was running Mountain Lion, we went fully Mac Desktop with Mavericks with some servers (Mac mini’s) and by Yosemite we were nearly there. By El Capitan Windows was no more anywhere. Sierra was a wonderful time for us.
Then hit High Sierra. The depreciation of iOS File Sharing was a real pain for us. Moving stuff out of Server App to System Preferences was merely a small inconvenience rather than anything else.
We’d already replaced FTP using an FTP server with TLS support using Brew. And if/when Server App is no more that’s where we are looking to go.
We have Mac mini servers running at 4 locations ; UK, EU and US , with 2 UK offices. Using Mac mini with macOS Server with iMac, MacBook, iPad and iPhone has helped our business growth at a cost that makes sense. We can buy several Mac mini’s for the price of the Windows servers we had which has given us more scope for running more services and replicas.
We’re not leaving that combination. Apple works well for us.

 

[hobowankenobi]

Speaking of depreciated features and alternative options......has anybody used CrushFTP? Runs on Macs. Free demo.

It looks very full featured, with goodies such as WebDAV.

 

[jscooper22]

First, thanks everyone for advice and input! Much appreciated.

hobowankenobi, we've been using CrushFTP for our file sharing site for years; it's great. There are plugins to do all sort of cool stuff. The documentation leaves a bit to be desired so there's some trial and error, but all-in-all a very good solution.