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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Catalina ends support for NAS...anybody going to miss it?

Michael Tiemann

Michael Tiemann

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I've been following a discussion on the Apple forums about Catalina's unreliable behavior concerning NAS devices. There are many people complaining. I just saw this post, which basically says:

At first they appeared willing to help: a support engineer did a remote connect to my MacBook, we did a screen recording and a dump of the network traffic when recreating the connection problems with my NAS. It then remained quiet. After sending a reminder to Apple I got the anwser that 1) Apple does not support NAS and 2) I should contact the manufacturer of my NAS.
Click to expand...

Now, the user who posted in Dutch, and the Apple support ticket he points to is in Dutch, so there may be a bit of a language translation problem. But the fact remains: Catalina has broken NAS connections that have been stable since OSX Lion, and Apple seems far more intent on promoting DAS (direct attach storage) than anything else. And it seems to be the case for many other users all over the world, with absolutely nothing coming back from Apple.

Would you be inconvenienced at all if Apple were to say "SMB and AFP? RIP!" Do you have enough sway with Apple to get them to address this issue in a more serious fashion?

I've already paused my plans to get a Mac Pro 2019 for other reasons, but it looks like its time to really migrate away from the whole platform.
 
Apple is not ending support for SMB and AFP or network file sharing, NAS, etc... Well, they are on their server end of things. It looks like Mac OS Server is going to finally be put to pasture, as Apple has seemingly wanted to do for some time now.

NAS compliance with other servers like FreeNAS, QNAP, Synology, etc.. all still work just fine under the latest Catalina release and betas.

If Apple were to remove support for common network protocols like SMB, etc.. they wouldn’t just have an unhappy customer base, they would have class action law suits and other more serious things to deal with.

Apple is not pushing a lot for DAS or large external or even localized storage. They want people on the cloud. And seem to be oblivious that the cloud doesn’t help people who have to move many GB, or TB of data in a single day. And as soon as you’re paying someone else for your daily bulk storage, you’ve already made a poor decision, IMO.
 
I should also say that Apple trying to kill OSX Server is still speculation by some. There is no outward sign of that and they are promoting the Mac Pro, in particular the rack mount configuration, for use as a server. Also promoting internal bulk / RAID storage solutions from Promise specifically and a couple others about to join the market with both HDD and SSD options.

OSX Catalina has direct support for 25G, 40G, 100G (and now it seems 400G too) network adapters from Intel, Mellanox and a couple others. Which are all new additions now that the new Mac Pro has PCIe slots again.

...Which brings me to the question of Catalina breaking NAS connections/ support. Only report I’ve seen is some glitchiness with OSX Server, hence the speculation it might be on its way out.
 
I do think Apple is seeing the big data future and Jeff's notes only reinforce that. I concur that Apple, like pretty much everyone else in the space, are promoting cloud based solutions so they can create durable revenue streams. I'd further suggest that Apple is motivated to support current and emerging standards to allow easy integration in multi platform workgroups lest they lose sales.

Cheers - #19
 
Issue with whatever NAS is being used not macOS.
 
Just one data point, but the only issue I had when setting up Catalina/MacPro 2019 with Synology NAS boxes, was that Bonjour broadcast under SMB was not on by default on the Synology devices. Once I turned that on, operation has been great.
 
Michael Tiemann said:
Scores of users would disagree.
Click to expand...


Read through that... 99.9% of all their issues could be eliminated by running fixed IPs and proper name server for NetBIOS/ Bonjour name management so they don't get ghosts and echos if IPs change or ports don't clear. Some are having issues when upgrading to Catalina. Understandable, had some issues like that here too. Catalina has a completely reworked network stack and differing support files. They're fighting old data from their prior OS X and need to purge all that. But honestly not worth the brain damage, wipe and clean install would be the better course because there are lots of changes throughout the OS. Sure, there are the usual "sky is falling" people who think this spells doom for NAS connections on Mac OS. ...Whatever. If Apple were eliminating AFP, SMB, etc.. protocol support, then why did they recently add them to iPad OS and continue to add features for servers and NAS with each update?

Of the discussion link you posted, the issues with NAS shares not showing on the sidebar in Finder is not new to Catalina. Just go manually add them (drag your share or desired folder to the sidebar) and then they pop up every time that server share connects. I connect all my NAS shares via the login items and on some I have to specify an alias or automator script instead of directly linking the share address. That's so I can set a delay because some will time out if they have to wait for WOL or other such things. I keep my QNAP so it does not sleep, saves a lot of headaches on both Mac and Windows. The drives will spin down, bun none of that WOL nonsense.
 
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I have had a bunch of problems on apple/windows NAS. I think a bit of it is also both sides adding security layers that seem to be messing something up. I have also found it hard to do clean re-image things on my mac, I have this one laptop (macbook pro) that I can't for some reason download catalina for (it says it should work but doesn't), and it's not obvious to me where to get older os images at apple. I have to support a bunch of boxes so re-imaging things when there is some incompatibility is death, especially with certain plugins stop working on various images. What I really liked about nas is i wasn't dealing with being a fully time network/version/os guy - seems recently I have got in admin land which is horrible for my productivity. Lately I have just been cutting over to everything being amd-CPU/windows.
 
I'm with Patrick: administration should not be this hard!

My current puzzler: I have two QNAP systems both connected to my 10G network. My iMacPro connects to both no problem. My MacBook Pro will connect to whichever I attempt to connect to first (A or B), but will not connect to the other (B or A). This behavior is the same whether I try to connect to smb://IP.V4.ADDRESS/ or use the Network browser and connect to what it sees courtesy of Bonjour. From the QNAP side, both NAS units are reporting successful authentication attempts. I.e., if I'm starting out fresh (no recent servers, no NAS units mounted, fresh relaunch of Finder) and I attempt to connect to the B unit, it succeeds (and the B unit logs a successful attempt to authenticate and access that device). If I then try to connect to A in essentially the same way, the operation fails (silently if I go via Command-K and use the IP address and SMD protocol), or "The Operation Failed" if I try to go via the Finder's network browser. In both cases, the A unit reports that a successful authentication was received. Ditto if I start with A and then try to add B.

I've been a Unix admin since 1985 and know how to search for answers that are not obvious. Catalina has me completely stumped, and most of my searches into the problem all have a common thread: Apple has deprecated AFP, NFS, and doesn't appear to like SMB very much either. But they especially don't support 3rd-party NAS devices.
 
I really hope this is a short term issue as Apple updates it's networking protocols, particularly for Catalina.
In 2020, assuming you aren't an edge case, I fully agree that simply connecting to a NAS should be trivial.

Cheers - #19
 
Michael write -
I have two QNAP systems both connected to my 10G network. My iMacPro connects to both no problem. My MacBook Pro will connect to whichever I attempt to connect to first (A or B), but will not connect to the other (B or A). This behavior is the same whether I try to connect to smb://IP.V4.ADDRESS/ or use the Network browser and connect to what it sees courtesy of Bonjour. From the QNAP side, both NAS units are reporting successful authentication attempts. I.e., if I'm starting out fresh (no recent servers, no NAS units mounted, fresh relaunch of Finder) and I attempt to connect to the B unit, it succeeds (and the B unit logs a successful attempt to authenticate and access that device). If I then try to connect to A in essentially the same way, the operation fails (silently if I go via Command-K and use the IP address and SMD protocol), or "The Operation Failed" if I try to go via the Finder's network browser. In both cases, the A unit reports that a successful authentication was received. Ditto if I start with A and then try to add B.

What kind of nonsense is this. Michael - you know who I am. You have my email address. You see me on all these forums. Why did you not contact me. I install shared storage systems every damn day - everything from QNAP to Synology, to everything else on the market. There is NO PROBLEM with macOS 10.15 (even 10.15.3). All of this works perfectly if your system is setup correctly.
For someone who knows infinitely more than I will ever know (yes, you Michael) - I am amazed by your post. This is how you setup your system. It's the way that "everyone" does it -
you get a 10G switch. You plug in QNAP # 1 10G port to the 10G switch. You plug in QNAP # 2 to the 10G switch. You plug in your computers 10G ports to the 10G switch.
You manually assign STATIC IP addresses to everything. The following IP addresses are just an example - you can use whatever you want -
your switch becomes 192.168.2.10
QNAP # 1 10G port becomes 192.168.2.3
QNAP # 2 10G port becomes 192.168.2.4
Your first computer becomes 192.68.2.11
your second computer becomes 192.168.2.12
you keep all your internet traffic off the 10G network.
You simply click on GO> Connect To Server> smb://192.168.2.3 and everything connects to the first QNAP
you simply click on GO> Connect To Server> smb://192.168.2.4 and everything connects to the second QNAP.
this is not brain surgery - this is simple networking, and it works perfectly.
And it works perfectly with macOS 10.15.3 Catalina.

You people are making these crazy assumptions, and relying on the morons on an Apple "genius" support site to help you - WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU !
As for macOS Server - Apple decided to degrade macOS Server starting with macOS 10.13. I know, because I did nothing but build Mac servers for video shared storage
up until 10.12.6. Then when macOS 10.13 came out, Apple degraded the server product, and screwed up file sharing.
Well GUESS WHAT - this is now FIXED in macOS 10.15, and File Sharing will work if you want to use a new 2019 Mac Pro as a file server with a 10G or 40G card in one of the PCI slots.
But it did NOT work in macOS 10.13 or macOS 10.14 without all kinds of bizarre permissions issues, and operational issues.
You no longer need the "server" software - you can just use simple file sharing.
How do I know this - because since 2009, I was building macOS server systems, and when 10.13 came out, I could no longer upgrade any systems and have them remain functional
that is when I became heavily involved with QNAP and Synology.

To repeat (and I will re read all the comments in this thread to add info) - there is NOTHING wrong with macOS 10.15 and network attached storage systems. Any thing that people are reporting
are probably user error. My clients have NO ISSUES with any of this stuff.

Bob Zelin
 
For a datapoint, I am having no issues with Both 10.14 (iMac Pros and Mac MiniS) and 10.15 (Mac Pro) with a FreeNas System that is Serving AFP, SMB, and NFS shares on a 10G network. And no, I am not serving the same share with different protocols. AFP for main editorial share, NFS for FCPx libraries and SMB for archival shares.

The only thing I ran into is that you can used tagged VLAN’s on the new Mac Pro and reach wire speed. It maxes out at a out 480MB/s. As soon as I let my switch tag the frames, speeds when back up to almost 1GB/s.
 
Hey Bob

No I did something you would yell at me for, bought a decommissioned Westmere era server and rolled my own. Not for everyone, but saved me some major bucks. My company had so many 8-drive raids that were shelved as archival it just made sense. Moved those to LTO and used the drives to populate the server.
 
I just saw on fcp.co, that LumaForge and Studio Network Solutions are reporting disconnects with SMB to their systems when using Catalina. I have been seeing random "disconnects" to QNAP systems since 10.13.
Some people see it, some people don't. If you look at Ronny Courtens entire post on this - he starts the thread stating that they have not seen this, even with large clients in Norway, and then he says that they have just started to
see random disconnects, and have reported this to Apple. Like I said - I have been seeing random disconnects from Apple products with SMB since macOS 10.13. In the REAL world, people continue to use this every day.
They reconnect. They initially blame the QNAP, I tell them "you can change to AFP" - but they just plow along. In every 2019 Mac Pro with 10.15 that I have installed so far (about 5 of them) - not one client has called me to
complain.
I can sit here and rant about Apple all day long (and I don't like what they are doing with their "security practices" in 10.15) - but let's face it - if you have been using Adobe Premiere, FCP X, Davinci Resolve or AVID Media - guess what -
BUGS EXIST. If they did not exist, then there would never be updates - there would never be a need for them. Things are always broken. No one knows this more than Michael Tiemann. I don't care if it's Pro Tools - this is the way
it's always been. New software and firmware releases have always been more about fixing problems, than "new features" - even though everyone likes to say that. Please don't feel like I am trying to defend QNAP here.
QNAP writes BAD FIRMWARE ALL THE TIME !!!!! I always joke when people ask me "what happens when the QNAP dies" - I always say that they NEVER die - but they ALWAYS write bad firmware. The only stable version of
QTS 4.3.6 was QTS 4.3.6.1070, and the only stable version of QTS 4.4.1 was QTS 4.4.1.1146. Are we all going to stop using Adobe products, because the Mercury Transmit feature doesn't work anymore, and the Media Cache
is a complete nightmare, and has been a nightmare for years now ? We DEAL WITH IT. Just like disconnects from 10.15 Catalina systems.

Put on your Big Boy Pants. Code writers screw up, just like we do.

Bob Zelin
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
OSX Catalina has direct support for 25G, 40G, 100G (and now it seems 400G too) network adapters from Intel, Mellanox and a couple others. Which are all new additions now that the new Mac Pro has PCIe slots again.
Click to expand...

Jeff, does Catalina really have driver support for Mellanox etc? That's cool if so, I haven't been able to find more info on it though.
 
Roy Pearson said:
Jeff, does Catalina really have driver support for Mellanox etc? That's cool if so, I haven't been able to find more info on it though.
Click to expand...

I’m going to go out on a limb and say yes, as there are models listed if you dig in the OS. I don’t have a Mac Pro here or available and no TB3 PCIe expanders that would work to test so can’t try it myself. I’m itching to do so. The only reason I’m not saying it’s a 100% guarantee that the drivers are there is Apple has done this before where they have hardware or chipsets listed in various plists and no actual driver to back it.

The Mellanox PCIe v2 dual 10G SFP card is supported, which is the model previous to the current one as I had that running in a sonnet TB2 PCIe expander on a trashcan mac. The Sonnet and QNAP 10GE to TB3 adapters both use Mellanox chipsets and work great. Just plug them in and go. So I’m really just unsure about the 25G and up adapters, even though specific cards are indeed referenced in Catalina.
 
I continue to install new QNAP systems every day - and most people, without asking me, are using macOS 10.15.x, and most of those are macOS 10.15.3. All the new 2019 Mac Pro's I have installed are running macOS 10.15.3.
Are there OCCATIONAL disconnects - yes, but I always see OCCATIONAL disconnects. It does not disconnect every 10 minutes, or every hour, or even every 6 hours ! Just once in a while. This does not represent a "non functioning
system".
ATTO has 40G drivers RIGHT NOW for all this stuff - and YES, for Macintosh.
https://www.atto.com/downloads/188/

For your reference, Sonnet Thunderbolt 3 to 10G adaptors use Aquantia AQC-107 chipsets, not Mellanox. Same as Apple, same as ASUS, same as QNAP (same as OWC which is the Sonnet).
Bob Zelin
 
So Bob helped me sort out whatever it was that made my one computer unable to access my QNAP NAS units that my other computer could easily access. There's still a mystery to solve regarding the QFinder Pro app, but it no longer directly implicates SMB. There are still gaps between what various documents say and how systems work, and it is not very helpful that when reps for Apple do speak, they say things like "we don't support 3rd-party systems" rather than "it should just work". One could say "it's just Apple being Apple", but it's not a very "pro" way to behave. Interoperability is a key attribute in the pro world.
 
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