NFS speed under OS X 10.3 and 10.4

[Carlo]

Hi guys,

Currently putting together a quote for online storage here at work. We are a mac shop, doing video and pre-media. So we have several TB of huge files to move around.

One of the solutions im looking at is the NetAPP devices, which are amazing machines.

However.. they dont support AFP only CIFS and NFS.

Now I know CIFS would be nothing special but what about NFS. A quick google search left me a bit worried.

This was one of the articles I saw which made me go.. hrmm

http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache...001810.html+os+x+NFS+speed&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3


So does anyone have any expirence with NFS on osx. Is it any good?

 

[thekurgan]

if your unix nfs server admin has the authority, you can compile Netatalk (from the sourceforge site). I have found it a great alternative to NFS as it still performs poorly on Tiger, even with extensive NFS server tuning. Native AFP using a combination of Netatalk (just the afp piece) and Apple's Bonjour Posix pieces make a great combination for users and it has good speed as well. Other than AFP, I use Samba, which also has excellent speed over NFS.

 

[zaipai]

We have a Netapp and the only speed issue is with Spotlight it takes for ever to search for files on the netapp. Just as a note there is no Atalk support for Netapp it supports only CIFS and NFS the Netapp site simply states that they do not now have nor are they likely to have support for Appletalk or the Apple File Protocol. I am currently looking for some program that will work faster for searching. So far nothing. I did notice that if I leave my station up it seems the searches go faster but when I reboot its dog slow again. I think it indexes and keeps the indexes in a temp area.