Seeking SMB performance feedback

[inkswamp]

Looking for feedback about El Capitan's SMB performance.

At my workplace, we have a dozen Macs on a Windows network.

Yosemite's SMB performance is jaw-droppingly bad with our Windows 2012 R2 file servers. It takes 2-3 minutes to list a directory with a few dozen files in it. Copy speeds are terrible. PCs are fine. Older Macs and OS X are fine. Seems to be specifically Yosemite when talking to Windows 2012.

I spoke to Apple support and was escalated to an engineering guy who more or less admitted it's a known issue and he hinted that it would be resolved in El Capitan (didn't promise or say it outright though.)

I'm hoping to hear that it's fixed and browsing SMB file shares on Windows 2012 servers isn't as slow as it is on Yosemite.

 

[nOw2]

I've just done some unscientific clicking around. I was able to get my Yosemite machine to lag a little, but was not able to get the developer beta of El Capitan 10.11.1 to lag.

This is something I'll know for sure after the 30th as we certainly are affected by this on our company network. It's been a problem for a long time and has even resulted in some users choosing to swap to Windows 7 on Dell laptops!

 

[MrNomNoms]

If you are still having problems then you might want to see if using NFS will do the trick since from the reports I have read you can get pretty close to wire speeds - I'm unsure though whether Services for UNIX/UNIX Subsystem is still available with Windows 2012.

 

[SlCKB0Y]

If you are still having problems then you might want to see if using NFS will do the trick since from the reports I have read you can get pretty close to wire speeds - I'm unsure though whether Services for UNIX/UNIX Subsystem is still available with Windows 2012.

Pretty sure its not.

 

[MrNomNoms]

Pretty sure its not.

According to this:

http://www.vkernel.ro/blog/installing-and-configuring-nfs-on-windows-server-2012r2

Windows 2012 R2 has a NFS server.

 

[inkswamp]

Just installed it on a Mac at work and the performance is no better than on Yosemite.

Really disgusted with Apple right now. They've made OS X look pretty but performance is crap. This is unbelievable.

Unfortunately, at this point, the only way to resolve this is to dump the Macs and move to PCs, unless someone has a miracle fix for this.

 

[Cayennr]

They've made OS X look pretty but performance is crap. This is unbelievable.

Amen brother.

 

[mikeerhymes]

Amen brother.

Anyone had any progress with this yet?

Im still struggling with Yosemite and SMB shares. Now that 10.11 has been out a while is it any better with performance for SMB shares?

 

[inkswamp]

Anyone had any progress with this yet?

Im still struggling with Yosemite and SMB shares. Now that 10.11 has been out a while is it any better with performance for SMB shares?

I've been testing SMB on a machine where I work. 10.11.0 and 10.11.1 both showed incremental improvements compared to Yosemite with SMB speeds when accessing shares hosted on a Windows 2012 server. The improvements are a good sign and a definite improvement over Yosemite but don't get El Capitan anywhere close to the speeds of Windows PCs or older Macs running 10.7 and before.

For example, listing a directory on a Windows network share takes 1-2 seconds on a PC or older Mac. El Capitan can take up to 2 minutes to list the same directory. File copies to and from the network typically take twice as long on El Capitan compared to PCs and older Macs. It's insane and this problem has been around since Mavericks.

FWIW, prior to El Capitan's release, I called Apple support about this and had my complaint escalated to the engineering group. I spoke to someone who did a remote session into my machine and witnessed the slowness. Once he saw it, he admitted it was a known issue between OS X's SMB implementation and Windows 2012 servers and then he strongly hinted (without outrightly saying it) that it was going to be addressed in El Capitan.

I'm hoping he's right and that by .3 or .4 we'll be seeing SMB speeds comparable to PCs and older Macs. I'm seeing signs of it happening but I'm not completely convinced yet.

 

[KingOfStuff]

these SMB performance issues have been irritating the heck outa me since 10.7. ive run my own NAS for 10 years and it has been a pain for the past several years to use it as os x SMB performance went to garbage. If i need to access a directory with a large number of files in it i resort to firing up Windows in a virtual machine and accessing the directory.

 

[leman]

I can't comment on 10.11 performance when connecting to a windows server, but SMB performance with OS X server is very good. For instance, I am able to open a 50+ MB PDF file on a SMB share and scroll around in it without any perceived lag. A 2GB file is copied within a few minutes over a 1Gb internet connection (even when connected to WiFi). At any rate, its very fast.

 

[KingOfStuff]

I can't comment on 10.11 performance when connecting to a windows server, but SMB performance with OS X server is very good. For instance, I am able to open a 50+ MB PDF file on a SMB share and scroll around in it without any perceived lag. A 2GB file is copied within a few minutes over a 1Gb internet connection (even when connected to WiFi). At any rate, its very fast.

there isn't a speed issue really. the big issues come when accessing large directories over SMB. say a folder with 1000 files in it (text or image or movie files it doesnt matter) it will take up to several minutes for Finder to show that any files are there and access them. when windows can do the same directory in literally a second.

 

[edwinx]

there isn't a speed issue really. the big issues come when accessing large directories over SMB. say a folder with 1000 files in it (text or image or movie files it doesnt matter) it will take up to several minutes for Finder to show that any files are there and access them. when windows can do the same directory in literally a second.

forgive me for bumping this from the grave...


but how is your SMB performance now? is spotlight able to index those drives?

Thanks,

 

[inkswamp]

forgive me for bumping this from the grave...


but how is your SMB performance now? is spotlight able to index those drives?

Thanks,

Couldn't tell you. After a few more iterations of the public betas with no improvement, I ended up having to give up. The network techs I was working with moved all the files over to an older version of Windows Server. Deeply disappointed in Apple over this whole debacle. It's pathetic. Biggest tech company in the world and they can't get SMB right. Ridiculous.

 

[AsprineTm]

Performance was back with 10.11.3 or .4 but all was lost with .5 again. Haven't tried .6 yet.

 

[AsprineTm]

Any news on SMB in 10.11.6?

 

[leman]

We run an OS X server with about 30TB of storage array, and copy performance over SMB, both with Mac and Windows clients is excellent.