
High Sierra broke AFP searching on our server - idorube
http://www.idoru.be/notes/dear-tim/
======
hnarn
Firstly, Apple has never been a respected actor in the server market. If
you're investing heavily into Apple servers, you're investing in a niche.
Presume accordingly. Secondly, converting/reformatting 300 Tb of disk is a lot
of work, but it's probably less work than contacting Apple, and whining about
how Apple is going down the drain in a public blog post.

I've never been a big Apple fan in terms of the company, but the iPhone is an
excellent product. The iPod was an excellent product. I have never heard
anyone say that in terms of server infrastructure, Apple makes "excellent
products". The only lesson here is: don't drink the kool aid, and investigate
every use case thoroughly without making emotional assumptions.

edit: Despite knowing almost nothing about AFP, I found articles on Google
saying that Apple shifted from AFP file sharing to SMB2 in an article dated
2013 -- that's five years ago! Apple themselves state that AFP is deprecated.
If you elect to run your own servers and support your own services completely,
these are news you should be reading.

~~~
code_sloth
> ... converting/reformatting 300 Tb of disk is a lot of work, but it's
> probably less work than contacting Apple ...

He didn't know what the problem was, so he contacted Apple support. Unless you
are suggesting he reformat 300tb everytime there's an issue, I don't see how
he could have avoided contacting Apple in his situation.

> ... and whining about how Apple is going down the drain in a public blog
> post.

I don't see why the author can't voice his opinion on his _personal_ blog.
You've voicing your appreciation of specific Apple products in a _public_
forum.

> Apple themselves state that AFP is deprecated. Deprecating isn't the same as
> removing. Unless Apple has previously said they are removing (or will
> remove) AFP support in High Sierra release notes, or otherwise announce it
> somewhere, I don't see how it's the user's fault at all.

~~~
hnarn
1\. I'm suggesting that if you are hosting and supporting your own physical
infrastructure and file hosting solution, your first interest should be
solving the problem, and as far as I can see Apple gave this outdated setup
the best solution available. You can either whine about it or accept the fact
that you did not keep your house in order and do whatever it takes to solve it
for your users and customers.

2\. Of course anyone can voice any opinion about Apple in any forum they want,
but I'm not the one with a current ongoing issue that I know a solution to but
am choosing not to implement to the benefit of shaming Apple in public
instead.

3\. You are correct that deprecating isn't removing, but when you're in a
niche market (Apple servers), using any setup that includes deprecated
protocols or components is a bad idea, and you should know this and plan for
it if you elect to roll your own.

The person who wrote this post seems to have a very entitled sense of what he
as a customer deserves in terms of continued software support from Apple, and
very little sense of what in turn his customers and/or colleagues are entitled
to and should expect from him/those that are responsible for keeping their
business critical solution working.

------
Hendrikto
Easy solution: Don‘t use Macs as servers, they are completely the wrong tool
for the job.

> Nowadays, I purchase iMac18,2’s to realize it has no thunderbolt2

Another tip: Read up on the hardware you are buying. I can‘t believe this
guy... buys hardware seemingly without even looking at the specs and then
complains.

~~~
littlecranky67
You are absolutely right. Apple quit the Server buisness when they killed the
Xserve, and relying on Macs as servers is really a bad idea given their
support interval for macOS. Seems the author is very angry that his next
server cannot be a fancy Apple device.

~~~
idorube
I'm easing into it :-)

~~~
alex_hitchins
I'd suggest looking at a replacement solution around an open filesystem. Then,
even if the world moves on to other technologies, you still have the source
you can update or even hire someone to maintain.

------
sbuk
Apple scheduled AFP for deprecation with OS X 10.9 in 2013 - 4.5 years ago.
There has been plenty of time between then and now to prepare for this.

------
solatic
Dear author,

Do you have an unexpired warranty? A support contract guaranteeing that
certain features will continue to work for the length of the contract? If so,
please have your lawyers get in contact with our legal team.

Signed, Fake Tim Cook

P.S. Next time, either make sure your asses are covered, or use FOSS instead,
so that in the event that public maintenance is no longer provided, you still
have the option of forking the codebase and hiring an engineer to do whatever
maintenance you need, as opposed to using our closed, proprietary product,
where you are now SOL.

------
PeterStuer
First of all, let me tell you that I feel your pain. Having something that
behind the curtains 'just worked' in your toolbox stop working and being
forced to spend time on it while you could be doing productive work just
sucks.

We all do it. We tend to focus on the troublemakers, dousing their frequent
little fires, and just forget the 'good' guys that are chugging along day
after day without a hitch. Is this the hardware equivalent of 'technical
debt'?

That lovely machine of yours is 10 years old. In our industry that does most
definitely make it qualify as an antique (unfortunately not with the 'antique'
valuations, going by the ~400$ these go for on eBay). Over those ten years,
you've gotten good mileage out of it, but it looks like those maintenance free
years are now taking their toll. Time to bite the bullet and find a new
solution. even if they would revert on AFP, it would just be a temporary stay
of execution. And I wouldn't look at Apple for this tbh. Servers and
workstations have long Ceased to be 'mainstream' products for them.

------
wazoox
Apple doesn't take the professionals seriously. Yes, they supposedly shifted
from AFP to SMB in 2013 but ever since, SMB performance of Mac OS hovered
between laughable and abysmal. And it's not so much the SMB server, but the
SMB client implementation that sucks.

On gigabit ethernet, AFP as well as NFS on Mac reach easily 100 MB/s, while
SMB hardly passes 50 MB/s. On 10GigE it's even worse: AFP, 1GB/s, SMB 150
MB/s. Testing on a Hackintosh, the same hardware that hardly passes 150 MB/s
in SMB reaches 900 MB/s running Windows 10.

SMB on MacOS is a bad joke for everyone needing to move big amounts of data.
NFS works OK, but alas, the Finder has (many) bugs and some things don't work
well (refreshing, icons, etc). AFP is still by far the best solution.

~~~
zbentley
I've found that tuning some of the SMB options ("man nsmb.conf") has
dramatically increased my recent Macs' SMB network throughput and the
responsiveness of finder in huge/deep shared directory hierarchies (due to
caching).

I don't know if any of those apply to using OSX as an SMB drive _host_ , but
they might.

None of this should be taken as disagreement with your post; just ideas for
improvements if you find yourself thus frustrated again.

------
petecooper
Add to this the macOS Server components will be significantly deprecated soon:

[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208312](https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT208312)

~~~
mschuster91
Oh God. Just... wtf. Apple really is trying to get out of anything that's not
iOS?! macOS Server is the equivalent of MS's Small Business Server package,
and now they're, essentially, removing core features out of it.

~~~
petecooper
My first thought was along the lines of "what's left in macOS Server to make
it a server?".

~~~
Corrado
I think the Update Cache and the MDM will still be there. Other than that I
can't think of anything (major) that's not on that list. :(

Of course, both of those things are pretty big components of iOS management.
Which reinforces the idea that Apple doesn't really care about anything except
iPhones.

------
Karupan
Apple has been removing features from OS X for a while now, and I’m sure it’s
going to continue with their focus on iOS. Eventually we will all be running
iOS on macs.

P.S: I’ve always stayed one version behind as I can get stuff done rather than
spend time and energy fixing whatever Apple broke in the new version.

------
petecooper
Anecdotally, I've been migrating macOS client networks away from macOS Server
for a few years. The preferred solution is an HPE MicroServer with Linux
(typically Ubuntu LTS) with `netatalk` and various trimmings (`avahi` etc).
Bonus points are garnered for a Time Machine option, too.

The icing on the cake is the clients can also choose their "Mac" server icon
for Finder:

[http://simonwheatley.co.uk/2008/04/avahi-finder-
icons/](http://simonwheatley.co.uk/2008/04/avahi-finder-icons/)

~~~
kalleboo
I have a NAS with both SMB and AFP (netatalk-based) support, and despite Apple
deprecating AFP, it's is still faster and more stable than Apple's SMB
support. I guess the Apple devs who made that stuff in the 90's knew what they
were doing...

~~~
pixl97
> it's is still faster and more stable than Apple's SMB support.

Anything is faster and more stable than Apple's SMB support. MacOS is horribly
slow and buggy with almost every modern NAS. Fixes include enabling SMB 1.0
(WTF?).

------
dschuetz
I wonder why there still isn't a company making highest quality products like
Apple once did, while _not_ being a total dick about customer support?

The machine seemed to work fine, despite its age. Why this smugness "Why don't
you upgrade to/buy a newer inferior more expensive product which doesn't suit
your needs at all?"?

Is a product obsolete as soon there is a newer product? Where is the line
between products which provide infrastructure services and interchangeable
consumer products?

~~~
idorube
I agree, as a video archivist, we support a lot of technologies that are much
older than most computer systems. e.g. uMatic, half inch tape, BetaSP, Film
etc. Albeit daunting, there is a slower decline in support for these machines.

~~~
eastWestMath
Someone else pointed out that Apple announced the deprecation of AFP 4 years
ago - it’s a bit unfair to say Apple caught you off guard here.

------
smoyer
Clearly your server is obsolete ... and this describes why my last ever Apple
purchase was in 2012.

I bought an iPad 1 ... it's still a wonderful piece of hardware and I (try to)
use it for web browsing nearly every day. Unfortunately, Apple realized that
it was under-powered just after the iOS 5 release and it hasn't gotten updates
since early 2014. It works fine except that it also doesn't have a browser
that will run current protocols and standards. Sigh!

~~~
PhasmaFelis
> _Clearly your server is obsolete_

The server works as well as it ever did. The problem is entirely in the
software used on the client machines. That's not what "obsolete" means.

~~~
smoyer
Sorry ... I should know by now that sarcasm doesn't work well on the Internet.
But the truth is that the server is de-facto obsolete if there are no clients
that can talk to it. Hopefully my second paragraph is clear that I don't
appreciate planned obsolescence.

------
rdl
FWIW, you can't share APFS formatted volumes via AFP at all. AFP is probably
not something you should depend on going forward.

------
tarjei
What I find odd is that no analysts are asking Tim about the direction Apple
is taking wrt. to build quality and developer support.

To me, Apple seems to have chosen a direction that will push developers over
to other platforms. This will not happen overnight, but I suspect that in 2-3
years time the guys who have to develop on Macs will be the ones groaning over
their OS - not the Windows people.

The combo of too expensive hardware and low build quality on OSX + bad DX is
Apples biggest threat at the moment.

~~~
zelos
I think the same thing. Abandoning servers as it's not their main product is
fine, but what about all those developers who want to build a basic CI system?
For Android it's simple - a bunch of cheap Dell servers with Linux or
something. But iOS? Most teams are using Mac Minis as servers, but they
haven't been updated in years and are dual-core only, so they're not great
options.

~~~
zbentley
Past a certain number of OSX instances needed for testing, a lot of shops
virtualize. The licensing can be a hassle, though. I suspect a lot of places
that do this wouldn't pass an audit.

------
hollander
How long does it take to reformat 300TB of disk? I guess the most time it
takes is the restore from backup, because that seems to be the safest and
easiest way to do this. But I might be wrong here.

I can see the problem here, and it's annoying that Apple doesn't handle this
better, and doesn't give you any insights whether they will solve this or not.
But I'm pretty sure that reformatting solves this problem for him a lot faster
than waiting for a bugfix.

~~~
cakerino
To move 300TB (say, restoring a backup) at an optimistic 300MB/s would take
just under two weeks.

~~~
avianlyric
Can you not use OSX to perform the conversion for you in place?[1] There
should also be a `diskutil` command that does it as well. Then you get
snapshots and better volume management.

As always do your research first, this conversion is a one-way thing.

[1] [https://datarecovery.wondershare.com/apfs/how-to-convert-
hfs...](https://datarecovery.wondershare.com/apfs/how-to-convert-hfs-to-apfs-
without-losing-data.html)

------
jo909
"And I have one particular server that we have loved for a long time."

Yes, for over 10 years now! (I looked up the manufacturing date from the
serial number, week 29 of 2007)

I feel for your acute pain, but I think you got your moneys worth and then
some out of that system, there should be plenty of saved budget to replace
that with a new storage server. One that has support from the vendor.

~~~
idorube
:-) I know, but isn't it sad. I'm forced bu Apple to switch to another server
OS if I want to keep using the 300TB SAS storage.

~~~
idorube
*by

------
idorube
Hi All,

I've read all your comments and agree that a migration towards newer hardware
and OSS Server software is needed. I've taking some first steps away from OSX
Server and have come to the following results regarding the issue's I had. See
below a comparison between old OSX server and new Ubuntu test server with
regards to High Sierra:

AFP Finder search on OSX 10.6.8 Server from High Sierra Client (17D47): No
result (most often) -or- Incomplete results (certain mounted shares are not
searched)

AFP Finder search on Ubuntu 16.04.3 Server from High Sierra Client: Fast
result Opening file works

SMB Finder search on OSX 10.6.8 Server from High Sierra Client: results show
after 7 seconds Opening file fails "The alias "<filename>” can’t be opened
because the original item can’t be found.

SMB Finder search on Ubuntu 16.04.3 Server from High Sierra Client: Fast
result, Opening file fails "The alias "<filename>” can’t be opened because the
original item can’t be found.

AFP Finder search on OSX 10.6.8 Server from Sierra Client: Fast result Opening
file works

AFP Finder search on Ubuntu 16.04.3 Server from Sierra Client: Fast result
Opening file works

SMB Finder search on OSX 10.6.8 Server from Sierra Client: Fast result Opening
file works

SMB Finder search on Ubuntu 16.04.3 Server from Sierra Client: Fast result
Opening file works

Some speed indications: SMB file copy from Ubuntu 16.04.3 Server to Sierra
Client: 20.91MB/s 21923002.62 bytes/sec AFP file copy from Ubuntu 16.04.3
Server to Sierra Client: 49.19MB/s 49459712.12 bytes/sec SMB file copy from
OSX 10.6.8 Server to Sierra Client: 48.98MB/s 51399308.67 bytes/sec AFP file
copy from OSX 10.6.8 Server to Sierra Client: 64.58MB/s 67710528.40 bytes/sec

------
michelb
Sorry to hear this. But it sounds like careless system management. I work at a
lot of video shops and none of them are even on Sierra, let alone High Sierra.
Update one laptop and test. Apple has put AFP on the backseat for several
years now (since they switched the default in Mavericks), in favour of SMB2.

~~~
idorube
I admit, I usually let my users upgrade their clients as soon as they wish.
This is the first time it broke something. :-(

------
duncan_bayne
I run a nearly identical server at home (the Mac Pro that is, not the massive
RAID).

I made the decision to install FreeBSD when I set it up and haven't regretted
that for a minute. The hardware is actually lovely, right down to the literal
nuts and bolts.

Just stay away from the Apple software ecosystem and you'll be fine.

------
toyg
I'm so happy I'm still on Sierra. They were so busy on the new filesystem,
that they broke so much other stuff. But hey, at least if you don't like an
OSX version, now you can just wait a year and you'll get a new one! Which may
or may not have more bugs.

------
zbentley
Quite tangental to the article, but:

This is why you shouldn't name protocols/standards after products!

I've worked with a few know-nothing users trying to slog through mac file
sharing for the first time and got confused when I told them that the
better/faster/better-supported sharing options, between macs, were the ones
_without_ "Apple" in the name.

"But it's named after Apple; it's going to be the most official/best
integrated thing if I'm on a Mac!" is a common barely-technical-user refrain.

The same thing applies to the "Apple Partition Map" bootsector option when
formatting disks.

Give things a descriptive, concise, memorable name that has nothing to do with
a brand. If you deprecate them, you'll be glad you did.

/pedantry

------
danpalmer
Going to throw my unpopular opinion out there...

High Sierra has been nothing but a smooth update for me. APFS has corrected
several external disk issues I've had. All in all, it has been a solid, if
small, update, similar to the other releases like Snow Leopard and Mountain
Lion.

~~~
nawtacawp
I'm assuming you didn't read the article since it is about the Apple Filing
Protocol (AFP) and not APFS.

------
jamesfmilne
idorube

You can take the SAS cards out of your Mac Pro and put them into a Thunderbolt
expansion chassis, and keep using the same disk array. No need to reformat or
convert to APFS.

And you can export your disk array via SMB2 or NFS to the other Macs.

It's a pity Apple don't make a decent Mac Mini anymore which could serve as a
decent server. Maybe they'll release a new one some day.

------
nkkollaw
Meh, if your servers are valued that much, you should know better.

I even know that Apple is not investing in servers anymore and hasn't in
years. AFP was also abandoned.

They should've planned for this and switched to some more solid server
configuration like Linux.

------
therealmarv
My advice: Build your own workaround / software solution for this problem with
a future opt out option to replace the server with Linux and Samba (yes I know
Samba is a pain but it is the standard nowadays).

------
mschuster91
A HW question: how are all these cards attached to the system? IIRC the
cheesegrater Mac Pros only have 4 PCI slots.

~~~
idorube
SAS can be daisy chained.

~~~
mschuster91
Article says "bunch of 10G ethernet cards" and "some SAS cards", though.

------
jjgreen
What's a computer?

------
thinkMOAR
Only thing that catches my eye is, only 16GB ram for 300TB storage?

~~~
vetinari
I noticed 100MB/s.

You don't need 10GbE and Cat6 for that. 1GbE and Cat5/5+ are fine. The SOHO
NAS from Synology or QNAP with ARM CPUs, 1-2 GB RAM and 1x 1GbE ports are
achieving such performance.

~~~
wolrah
That's what caught my eye too. 100MB/s is nothing. The author claims that he's
getting half that with SMB, which means something is horrifically broken with
his system.

Anything worth using as a file server should have no trouble doing 100MB/sec
with pretty much any protocol.

~~~
wazoox
No, something is horrifically broken in Apple SMB client implementation.
That's probably why they never actually phased out AFP, because _it 's the
only way to move data fast on MacOS_.

~~~
vetinari
Paradoxically, the speeds that I'm getting from my rMBP13 for SMB transfers
are comparable over Ethernet (both Apple Thunderbolt adapter and rangom
assortment of TB2 docks) to Linux and Windows machines, but over Wi-Fi, rMBP
is much faster than any Linux or Windows machine I have. The Mac machine is
802.11ac 3x3 MIMO by Broadcom, while the others are only 2x2 by Intel, but I'm
not sure that the speed difference could be explained just by this factor.

Yes, there were small bugs in the past, like waiting for some timeout when
browsing shares on the server when the auth is done via Kerberos, but they
were ultimately fixed.

------
nailer
This will hit everyone using non-iOS Apple products either sooner or later:

You're no longer Apple's priority. You haven't been for some time. MacOS isn't
getting major updates, the development team has been largely disbanded: MacOS
is a niche platform that only exists to develop iOS apps. One day it won't
even do that.

Apple already markets and wants iOS to replace your laptops, and doesn't
significantly care about the server or workstation markets.

If you rely on MacOS you need to think about this, and the longer you delay it
the more it's going to hurt.

~~~
LeoPanthera
The iMac Pro is the strongest evidence that this isn’t true.

~~~
saas_co_de
It seems that the Pro is designed to appeal only to the faithful and have a
very limited lifespan.

Putting everything in an integrated system with limited to no expansion
possibilities rules out a lot of potential users (anyone with common sense)
and means that if one component fails or becomes obsolete the whole thing is
useless. If there were awards for excellence in planned obsolescence those
systems would be a shoe in.

~~~
matthewmacleod
It means none of those things and it is totally baffling to me that you refuse
to accept that other people may have different views on these systems' utility
to them and that they aren't idiots without "common sense" for that.

