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IndianaPwns

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 14, 2014
4
0
***also posted on Apple Community forums: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8266497***

Alright - Wow! So do I have some epic questions and a long story for this community...a little backstory:

We are medium-sized video production company and for the last 5 years we’ve edited from Mac's through and through - as it stands, we have 5 iMac's, 3 Mac Pros, 2 MacBook Pros, and a Mac Mini. Needless to say we're very familiar with the Mac "workflow", operating systems, and capabilities of these machines. All in all - we love the Apple brand, but we're having some serious issues...

We've started working and storing files & footage on a 100TB 10Gbps server that is set up for access through the (very popular) SMB protocol. The operating system is freeNAS. Very simple setup.

A week ago we purchase our very first iMac Pro (10-core, Vega 64, 64GB, 1TB). The machine is insane - editing Native 6K at full-resolution and high-quality playback is another world. That being said, we are having some MAJOR connection/compatibility/error issues working with our SMB share.

The first thing you should know is that the iMac Pro HAS been updated to the newest version of High Sierra (10.13.3). It's my understanding that this update fixed disconnection issues with SMB shares, but that doesn't seem to have helped any our problems - there are a variety of things happening here:

Our first major transfer was 5TB from a USB 3.0 RAID5 External Drive through our iMac Pro to our server (10Gb port>Switch>Server), but it never got past 200GB :-/ The machine crashed completely, no error, and left us with the terrifying single blinking folder on the desktop. Ok, we restart and try again - same issue, right around 200 GB.

Fine, it's gotta be a server issue. One of our MacBook Pro's is still standard Sierra - so I grab our Sonnet Twin 10Gb Adapter, plug it into a Thunderbolt 2 port, sign-in, and connect to the server. Low and behold that same 5TB transfers without a hitch AND at nearly a 1/3 faster (850MB read/write). For that first 200GB through the iMac Pro's 10Gb port we were only getting in the high 500MBs. Hmmmm...something's going on here, and it doesn't seem to be the Server...

Is the iMac Pro's 10Gbps card the issue? Well let's try something. I grab the same Sonnet Twin 10Gb adapter, plug it into a Thunderbolt 2 to USB-C adapter, download the proper drivers, connect to the Server and start the transfer! We're past 200GB...400GB...550...600...and crash (this time with a simultaneous server disconnection alert and classic finder -36 error). This is starting to smell like a High Sierra issue.

Alright...so what is going on here? We need help, help from you, help from Apple - we have got to get this sucker working properly and fast. We're wasting money and I'm starting to get that gnawing feeling in the back of my neck that this is going to take another month to fix. HELP!
 

mac.rumors

macrumors regular
May 9, 2008
160
46
London, UK
***also posted on Apple Community forums: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8266497***

Alright - Wow! So do I have some epic questions and a long story for this community...a little backstory:

We are medium-sized video production company and for the last 5 years we’ve edited from Mac's through and through - as it stands, we have 5 iMac's, 3 Mac Pros, 2 MacBook Pros, and a Mac Mini. Needless to say we're very familiar with the Mac "workflow", operating systems, and capabilities of these machines. All in all - we love the Apple brand, but we're having some serious issues...

We've started working and storing files & footage on a 100TB 10Gbps server that is set up for access through the (very popular) SMB protocol. The operating system is freeNAS. Very simple setup.

A week ago we purchase our very first iMac Pro (10-core, Vega 64, 64GB, 1TB). The machine is insane - editing Native 6K at full-resolution and high-quality playback is another world. That being said, we are having some MAJOR connection/compatibility/error issues working with our SMB share.

The first thing you should know is that the iMac Pro HAS been updated to the newest version of High Sierra (10.13.3). It's my understanding that this update fixed disconnection issues with SMB shares, but that doesn't seem to have helped any our problems - there are a variety of things happening here:

Our first major transfer was 5TB from a USB 3.0 RAID5 External Drive through our iMac Pro to our server (10Gb port>Switch>Server), but it never got past 200GB :-/ The machine crashed completely, no error, and left us with the terrifying single blinking folder on the desktop. Ok, we restart and try again - same issue, right around 200 GB.

Fine, it's gotta be a server issue. One of our MacBook Pro's is still standard Sierra - so I grab our Sonnet Twin 10Gb Adapter, plug it into a Thunderbolt 2 port, sign-in, and connect to the server. Low and behold that same 5TB transfers without a hitch AND at nearly a 1/3 faster (850MB read/write). For that first 200GB through the iMac Pro's 10Gb port we were only getting in the high 500MBs. Hmmmm...something's going on here, and it doesn't seem to be the Server...

Is the iMac Pro's 10Gbps card the issue? Well let's try something. I grab the same Sonnet Twin 10Gb adapter, plug it into a Thunderbolt 2 to USB-C adapter, download the proper drivers, connect to the Server and start the transfer! We're past 200GB...400GB...550...600...and crash (this time with a simultaneous server disconnection alert and classic finder -36 error). This is starting to smell like a High Sierra issue.

Alright...so what is going on here? We need help, help from you, help from Apple - we have got to get this sucker working properly and fast. We're wasting money and I'm starting to get that gnawing feeling in the back of my neck that this is going to take another month to fix. HELP!

Have you tried configuring your Ethernet hardware settings in Network Preferences manually so the iMac Pro uses full duplex mode without the energy effecient setting?
 

IndianaPwns

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 14, 2014
4
0
Have you tried configuring your Ethernet hardware settings in Network Preferences manually so the iMac Pro uses full duplex mode without the energy effecient setting?

YES actually! After reading a few other threads that’s the first thing we tried. Unfortunately, when we switched it to: Manual, 10GbaseT, full-duplex/flow-control/energy efficient ethernet OFF, Standard (1500), our connection dropped to a laughable 10Mbps. We didn’t even bother to try and transfer anything at those speeds.

None of this is making sense.
 
Last edited:

FredT2

macrumors 6502a
Mar 18, 2009
572
104
YES actually! After reading a few other threads that’s the first thing we tried. Unfortunately, when we switched it to: Manual, 10GbaseT, full-duplex/flow-control/energy efficient ethernet OFF, Standard (1500), our connection dropped to a laughable 10Mbps. We didn’t even bother to try and transfer anything at those speeds.

None of this is making sense.
What does Apple Support say?
 

khollister

macrumors 6502a
Feb 1, 2003
541
39
Orlando, FL
Network infrastructure? Bad port on the switch, bad cabling?

Have you tested it at 1Gbps? Could be a HW issue on the iMP too.
 
Last edited:

G5isAlive

Contributor
Aug 28, 2003
2,654
4,606
Sorry, can't help much but say my Synology DS918+ has no problems with the iMac Pro and SMB, but its only 1GbE .. haven't tried aggregating the two ports though they say its doable.
 

MacRS4

macrumors 6502
Aug 18, 2010
330
467
London, UK
I have my iMac pro wired via Gb Ethernet to a 2017 i7 iMac and was getting terrible connectivity speeds between the two. Oddity was that if I ran a Windows VM on the i7 then performance was pretty good.

I've turned off SMB packet signing and am back to getting good performance. I've not looked in to the specifics - my plan was to see if it helped, then have a look see how it helped...but haven't gotten that far.

There's an Apple article on it here: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT205926

You can use this command from Terminal to turn off SMB packet signing on the client:

printf "[default]\nsigning_required=no\n" | sudo tee /etc/nsmb.conf >/dev/null

If you want to do it on the unit hosting the actual share, well, in my instance that's also a Mac so I used:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.smb.server SigningRequired -bool FALSE

sudo /usr/libexec/smb-sync-preferences

This has my connectivity running at roughly the same as iMac to virtual Windows.
 
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