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The company I do IT Admin for currently has Windows servers, and almost entirely macOS clients. When the time comes to upgrade their servers, I am interested in moving them to Linux or some alternative that doesn’t require paying the Windows premium, but instead investing that money in high performance hardware. So I would appreciate anyone’s input who has experience with this specific transition from Windows to Linux file services and any recommendations on good hardware to use with Linux and a recommended type of Linux OS.

Also would appreciate any thoughts on how file services perform for Mac clients. I recall there were major SMB issues between OS 10.9 Mavericks and Windows Server, so not sure if the connection between a Linux server and macOS clients also suffers from similar performance issues.

48 Spice ups
(Harry Lui) 2

Do you need a “server” or would a NAS be suffice?

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I suppose a NAS could work, but seems like standard type servers with a full OS have more flexibility and options to integrate with things like monitoring and backup software services.

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If it’s all mac, why not use a NAS that can do AFP?

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Less excited about a NAS because of limited ability to integrate with backup/BDR services.

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Because Apple does not do server-grade hardware anymore. No options for separate physical RAID disks for OS/Data like there was for the old cheese grater Mac Pro, and no options for redundant psu like there was for the XServe.

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(Evan7191) 7

Also, AFP is deprecated.

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Macs are SMB based, AFP is legacy.

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It’s like a car…
Everyone can drive an automatic. Just hop in, turn the key and go.
Not everyone can drive a manual (stick-shift). It takes some training and a few hiccups along the way, but it can still be done.
If you are saving money for a serious purpose (ie - it’s my job or the OS) then by all means go Linux. If you’re just doing it because it’s cool and the savings will look good on your resume, then you will also want to think about who else is going to support this system in your absence (sickness, holidays, etc…).
Linux has gained a huge user base over the years (I came in at RH5), but it’s still not mainstream enough that you could find a service provider with more than one tech that is knowledgeable in the ways of a Samba AD file share.

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@techadmin8 @scottalanmiller thx for the info, did not realize AFP had been deprecated. Do you know if something like Acronis Access Connect (formerly ExtremeZ-IP) is still needed to get sufficient performance on a Mac connecting to Windows Server, or is SMB in Sierra decent enough now to function natively?

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@clilush very good thoughts and points, thx for the input! I think it’s more of a cost concern, but not critical, so availability of support and familiarity is definitely a benefit for something like Windows Server.

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SMB works natively, but don’t expect the same performance that you used to get with AFP on Xserve. In particular, we had trouble with spotlight searches and moved to some 3rd party search tools.

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Their old XServe was a joke even when they made one. It’s good that it is gone :wink:

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Try Freenas
Linux based, full gui, easy configuration and super powerful. Best of all it will fun on just about any hardware.
As to your backup system it is easy to integrate to many backup systems

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That’s not SMB vs. AFP, that’s the well known “Finder Bug” and affects AFP as much as SMB and NFS. You fix this for SMB with the vfs_fruit module OR by replacing the Finder on Mac OSX as the actual issue is a bug in the Finder application.

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FreeNAS is not Linux based, it is FreeBSD. I would avoid it. I have done commercial support for it for a long time and I would never recommend it. Here is why…

http://www.smbitjournal.com/2015/07/the-jurassic-park-effect/

It’s not that FreeNAS is bad, but it isn’t as good as FreeBSD without the FreeNAS GUI. I’ve dealt with several companies just this month that lost their systems because either because of FreeNAS bugs or issues influenced by the unnecessary complexities of FreeNAS.

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That rarely limits you.

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Last that I knew the Windows SMB services, while superior to Linux’ for Windows use, lack the needed extensions for addressing the Finder bug and so only Linux, BSD or a NAS that implements vfs_fruit.

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Linux is by far the most popular server OS in the world. There is zero challenge getting Linux support. It’s actually far easier to find Linux support compared to Windows because the ecosystem filters by skill much more aggressively. You can argue that Windows might be easier, but I’ve not seen this hold up in the real world at all, but you can’t argue that linux isn’t the most mainstream (it’s #1, easily close to double Windows by now and increasing) and Linux companies are always looking for clients to support. You’ve got more Linux support available in this community than you could ever need, for example. Remember a single Linux admin can support hundreds or thousands of servers, so you don’t need all that many to support huge numbers of customers.

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I’ve not used it personally, so this is not a personal endorsement. But I’ve heard that it works okay. It’s just a third party AFP server, though, and officially it’s a legacy support system that has been deprecated by Apple. So at best it’s a bandaid. Should work fine on current systems, but it’s definitely a technical debt situation. I’d avoid it, especially when a better, future-proofed, fully supported system is available for free. Paying for something that would be considered technical debt even if free, is pretty extreme.

As nice as Windows would be, the cost of Windows licensing, plus Acronis add on licensing adds up. Linux with Samba server is super standard and well known. Way easier to get support for that than for Linux with Acronis.