Tools for (spotlight) indexing NAS drives

I searched far and wide for info about this, and this comment summed up the situation perfectly. The issue with Finder is that server needs to have support for it, which SMB doesn't.

My system is: iMac 27" 2017 and Synology DS218+.

At first I shared over SMB, as High Sierra is SMB only, but that stands only for shared FROM the Mac. For shares from the server, AFP is still way to go; read a bit about it below.

At first I initiated SMB shared folder indexing using sudo mdutil -i on /Volumes/DRIVENAME in terminal. The computer did index the drives, but the finder didn't show anything.

After a bit of testing I noticed that Finder really doesn't work on SMB. It simply doesn't show anything when you search for stuff. Than I turned there AFP on, and after indexing this works like a charm.

Performance: There is no practical difference between AFP and SMB performance of file-shares shared from sufficiently powerful server over gigabit network. I get same 100-110 MB/s transfer speed on both protocols. The paramount is really the CPU power of the NAS / server solution.

I replaced the Synology DS414 slim with DS218+ exactly because weak CPU in former NAS. In this case SMB (3.1) was the fastest, because that is a more optimised protocol (compared to older SMB versions and the AFP itself), and the weak CPU in DS414 slim couldn't cope with data rate. This is true for any insufficiently powered NAS.

Here you can see feature comparison:

When getting Synology NAS, you should always look at the small file performance comparison available on the site, because that is indicative of how powerful the NAS is at a glance. Transferring large files is relatively fast on any NAS, but when you start copying smaller stuff, you will start to suffer from serious bottlenecks.

There are two approaches.

1. Have the server mount the Isilon via iSCSI or NFS and 're-share' via SMB. If this was a Mac server it could then on the server do the Spotlight indexing.
2. Use a Windows Server and this time also buy and install Acronis Access. Use Acronis Access to again re-share the Isilon to the Mac clients. Acronis Access does two functions, first it allows a Windows Server to act as an AFP server, secondly it does Spotlight indexing on the Windows Server.

I am not aware of any open source (separate) Spotlight code although apparently the current Netatalk software can do Spotlight indexing. Netatalk is used on nearly all NAS boxes with AFP support but typically is not configured to do Spotlight indexing. Hypothetically you could build a Linux server, install Netatalk on it, configure it to mount the Isilon via iSCSI or NFS and re-share it via AFP using Netatalk with Spotlight indexing enabled.

Originally Spotlight for network volumes was only possible over AFP using a genuine Mac server and later Acronis Access. (Formerly known as ExtremeZ-IP.) Since Apple themselves now standardise on SMB it is now also possible with SMB again using a genuine Mac server. The SMB server needs to do the Spotlight indexing. As should be obvious Microsoft do not do this themselves on Windows Servers, however SAMBA also typically used in all NAS boxes in theory can support Spotlight.

See - https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Spotlight

In theory the Isilon could do this itself and perhaps they are using SAMBA and like pretty much all NAS boxes have not configured SAMBA to support Spotlight.

No, you're not alone! This is a most vexing shortcoming of the Apple system.

I have extensive archives in my several NAS drives, and though the files themselves are indexed with DiskTracker (which I've used since System 9, with much pleasure and success), it is not possible to do text-string searches within those files.

I find Terminal commands a messy work-around, and fiddly: one character omitted, one space misplaced and... oh dear.

SDG

My employers use large Isilon clusters (running a variant of BSD) for file servers, and as such, these large, scalable NAS do not support AFP. They do support SMB, NFS, and even WebDav (though I prefer not to use WebDav because it interferes with the administration console and forces admins to specify port 8080 - not a big deal; but not preferable). As a practical matter, my options are SMB or NFS, and NFS is cumbersome because we do not have our cluster using kerberos, so I have to create a different export for each user, in order to maintain permissions. A third party Spotlight indexer that could be run from an external machine would be ideal. I do not want to try to compile and install 3rd party indexer directly on the server unless said indexer is approved by EMC for the particular version of OneFS that we are using on our cluster, as it will be my *backside* if something goes wrong with the cluster.

Spotlight seems to only work over AFP at least with regards to NAS drives. There are three possible solutions I see, one of which it sounds you may not be able to do and it is up to you whether either of the others is suitable for you.

1. Many NAS drives do indeed support AFP as well as SMB and NFS, almost all such NAS drives would use an open-source version of AFP called Netatalk, the latest version of Netatalk also has the ability to index an AFP share for use with Spotlight. See http://netatalk.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Spotlight Unfortunately most NAS drives do not turn this on even if they have a new enough version installed, and I cannot answer as to whether a manual option to enable it is possible, you would have to speak to the particular NAS supplier.
2. A company called GroupLogic which has since been bought by Acronis, made a product formerly called ExtremeZ-IP which is now called Acronis Access Connect. This originally added just an AFP server function to a standard Windows Server but more recently also added the ability to index a Windows server for access via Spotlight over AFP of course. This was then extended to be able to connect to a NAS server, and re-share it via AFP from the Windows server and again index it for use with Spotlight. In other words it made the NAS drive both available via AFP and searchable via Spotlight. Clearly this will do what you need but it also requires a Windows server and the purchase of Acronis Access Connect. See https://kb.acronis.com/content/48794
3. A Mac server can connect to a standard NFS server i.e. your NAS, the Mac server can then re-share the NFS volume via AFP and the Mac server can index the volume for searching via Spotlight, in effect doing a similar task to what ExtremeZ-IP/Acronis Access Connect do on a Windows Server.

Note: The NFS feature in OS X is hidden, you will have to configure it manually.