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What's the current best practice for file sharing protocol with macOS Server?
On an i7 Mac Mini running 10.11.6, I've got AFP and SMB active (as well as WebDav) and I have a number of different MacOS clients connecting to is from 10.14.x - 10.10x.
Are there performance benefits comparing SMB to AFP?
Should I disable AFP with changes introduced in High Sierra, or will that exclude clients with older OS installs?
MarcStress wrote:
'm running macOS 10.11.6 with Server 5.1.7.
I'm not sure I follow your comment about Server being a MDM (Mobile Device Management) package.
That is, if (when) you upgrade to Mojave, you will have what is effectively an MDM package.
What you're looking at here—and most of the rest of what Server offered—is no longer part of the Server package.
You're left to migrate to a different server platform, to create your own server distribution or to use one of the efforts to provide an add-on Server-like package for macOS, to install one of various available commercial or open-source NAS packages on some dedicated or some repurposed hardware, or to use the integrated SMB services in macOS and which is what Server does on High Sierra and later.
Testing and optimizing the performance of your Server replacement will probably have better long-term results.
And again, Apple is headed away from AFP and to SMB.
MrHoffman wrote:
What you're looking at here—and most of the rest of what Server offered—is no longer part of the Server package.
My original post is not about Mojave or the current MDM package. I'm running High Sierra. I'm not asking about or considering upgrading to Mojave or migrate to a different server platform on this machine.
I'm looking for someone who has experience with macOS 10.11.6 with Server 5.1.7 to offer some of their real-world use and best practices serving client computers that use macOS 10.10.x – 10.14x.
The support article you linked is helpful to note feature degradation from Server 5.1.7 to 5.7.1. A few services were terminated in 5.4, but the 5.7.1 package shows how much has been removed from Server. For me, all signs point to staying put on Server 5.1.7.
Thanks for confirming that Apple is migrating all file sharing to SMB.
If anyone else can chime in on 5.1.7, that would be great to continue the conversation.
Well, there is no file sharing protocol and no WebDAV present in the current versions of Server.
Server is now an MDM package.
Apple is migrating all file sharing to SMB, so that’s probably the general direction you’ll want to head.
Performance of network storage access will usually be network-constrained, as the host-local I/O connections are (much) faster.
As for your questions, try it.
'm running macOS 10.11.6 with Server 5.1.7.
I'm not sure I follow your comment about Server being a MDM (Mobile Device Management) package. Perhaps you're referring to Server for Mavericks, which doesn't apply. Upgrading to Mavericks is not part of our strategy for this file sharing server.
As you can see from my screenshot, Server 5.1.7 still has WebDAV, we're not using it so I turned it off.
We've got 1GB and 2GB (concatenated) connections to desktop workstations on our LAN, so our network-throughput is pretty healthy, storage units on server are Thunderbolt 2.
Again: try it. I've tried both.
I haven't seen a significant performance difference between the two, but I have seen that some apps can work better with one than with the other.
And my network configuration is undoubtedly different from yours.
See what works better for you, and what performs better.
If you've been around the 'net long enough, this isn't far off from the classic "should I use LPR/LPD or telnet printing to access my printer?" discussions. (Now we're increasingly using IPP/IPPS, of course.)
And again, I'd look to use SMB longer-term.
I'm on macOS 10.13 now, and migrating servers away from macOS, and no longer have something as old as 10.11 in use to test.
Server Performance AFP SMB
