Faster setup for a mac based office

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Metraon

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 23, 2011
Messages
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I am going to revamp a mac based office. They have about 4 newish iMacs or MacBook Pros and they are 4 users (all 4 are designers and graphists) and they want something relatively fast.

They currently have an iomega ix-200 (1TB) and a netgear WNDR4500 and they says its quite slow.

I was thinking about revamping everything up (budget about 2000$)

Router :

Ubiquiti EdgeMAX EdgeRouter (5 port)

Switch :

HP-1810-24G v2

NAS :

Synology DS412+ with 4 (WD20EFRX 2TB)

Anything else you guys would recommend ?

Thanks!
 
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What are they complaining about that is slow? File transfers? Backup? Slow browsing?
 
File transfer and file reading were "slow". I have not experienced it myself because the NAS is dead. But it seems that the guy before me configured the macs with SMB shares.

Everything else is OK for them, they got a 50/50 internet and never complained about browsing.

The iomega ix-200 drives were on raid1 and the nas itself is quite old. One of the drive failed recently and during re-silvering there was a surge and now, it wont boot up.
 
How large are the file transfers?

I hope they weren't maxing out gigabit ethernet (~110MB/s) especially with the 4 of them and calling it slow. If thats the case you'd be making a huge mistake throwing in more gigabit equipment. I do work for an architect that has a great workstation but hates the slow speed of file transfers with his NAS. He is capped by gigabit ethernet.

If this is the case here then you'd need to look to 10GBe for each machine to truly remove bottlenecks. Or you could at least get 10GBe on the NAS and switch its hooked to so each user can have their own 110MB/s of bandwidth without sharing it.
 
It looks like the ix-200 maxed out at around 30 MB/s write, 60 MB/s read - so there's significant room for improvement there before being bottlenecked by gigabit ethernet.

I could also see workloads involving lots of small files being very taxing on a NAS, especially if more then one user is accessing them at a time.

How are the systems connected. I'm guessing the NAS is wired to the Netgear and all (or most) of the Macs are wireless.
 
Some of the new MAC OS's have issues with SMB file transfers, what protocol are you using for the transfers? If you change to NFS it will start flying.
 
Those iomegas are complete pieces of shit.

Get a decent Synology and they'll be MUCH happier.
 
Yes its all wireless with a WNDR4500 (except the ix-200), they don't have a switch or anything else wired, even the printer.

Fortunately they are moving into a new office, I asked them to wire the 4 desk stations.

I think adding a switch with LACP and the NAS supporting LACP as well would help. The DS412+ have fairly good reviews and the drives also.

I was thinking about buying as Ubiquiti uap-pro for the ipads and the mobiles.

Each user want to work on the NAS directly, its more simple that way for them than schedule backups or synchronize folders, unless there is a utility for mac os x to somehow synchronise the nas and a local folder.
 
Metraon said:
unless there is a utility for mac os x to somehow synchronise the nas and a local folder.
Click to expand...

If you go with a Synology NAS they have a sync client called "Cloud Station".

I use it to sync my profile from my MacBook to my NAS, but you can sync any folder you wish.
 
Oh wow all wireless...

No wonder. Gigabit Ethernet would be a blessing to these people.
 
k1pp3r said:
Some of the new MAC OS's have issues with SMB file transfers, what protocol are you using for the transfers? If you change to NFS it will start flying.
Click to expand...

I've never worked on an all Mac network, but I have read this same suggest for years on Linux forums. SMB has some overhead packets which slow down transfer, NFS doesn't have the overhead so it transfers much quicker. Check if the new NAS supports NFS.
 
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