Need to test Mac Computer for Network Speed and Read/Write Times

How many workstations will connect to this G5?

What kind of network switch are you connected to? (Make/Model)

OS X (non server) I believe can only support upto to 10 concurrent connections.

We will have 3 users and I would like to have room for 3 more for expansion. All will be Mac Pros running Leopard (10.58). (We won't be migrating to Snow Leopard until after January as we are going into a busy production season until then). This network will be used for 3 graphic designers producing catalogs for print. (QuarkXpress, Photoshop, Acrobat Pro)

Answers to your questions:

1. I will add users via the sharing preference pane.
2. I will only be sharing via AFP as we have no Windows clients that will connect to this server. All 3 will be connected via ethernet cable.
3. We already connect to the G5 via "Screen Sharing".(It is currently used as a print server with no monitor or keyboard attached)
4. All 4 computers (the server and clients) are connected to the same switch (D-Link DGS 2208 Gigabit). This is connected to our larger network backbone (not sure about the exact specs of that system.) But all connections should be local.

A little bit about our current setup. We have 1 of the 3 mac pros sharing 2 internal 1TB SATA Drives that our not used for the OS. We have the drives partitioned as follows:

DRIVE 1= 7200 RPM 1 TB SATA Drive is all for file storage (we are currently using 300 GB of that drive)
DRIVE 2=1 TB Drive - Partitioned-500 GB Time Machine & 500 GB for Nightly Backups of Drive 1 via Super Duper (these are scheduled well after closing). The Super Duper Backup is copied to a disk image and sent to a file server at a colocation off site every Friday night.

The issue we are having is if something locks up that workstation the other 2 workstations lose their connectivity. We also have to kick everyone off the network if we need to restart that system for any reason.

Thanks to roylong and nappy_d for your responses and let me know if you need any more info.

OK. I mean no insult when I ask this question.

If you have a much larger infrastructure besides these three or four Macs, is there any reason you don't want to leverage the networked potential(servers etc) rather than a make shift peer netowrk?

if can take advantage of disk space and backups on those larger servers, why not do it?

I support both Macs and Windows in a media environment and my files all live happily on a sinlge file server over gigE wire.

Just a thought.

Now, if you use NFS [NFS Manager or similar will give you better control] and have your clients connecting via NFS, you will find that a lot of these issues go away - NFS is a lot more resilient to network and computer 'blips'.

Try it and you'll see, it works a treat.

Also, this gets around any limitations of AFP and number of connections to the Workstation OS.

Unfortunately tho, you can't use NFS thru the OS X GUI. You have to either use the command line and enable Samba and then connect to the Samba webGUI for management. It aint pretty but becareful with this as it is completely undocumented and no real commercial support.

NFS is a network file sharing protocol used by Unix -it works out of the box with OS X (because its based on Unix) and in fact is just about a pre-requisite of any Unix OS.

You don't need to touch SAMBA for NFS in any way at all, SAMBA is the Unix/Linux implementation of SMB.

NFS daemon runs with no set up or installation.  You do however need a small amount of knowledge with respect to manually configuring NFS exports and shares.  Thus the reason I suggested using NFS Manager; this application lets you update exports from the 'server' and add shares on the client.  The NFS manager uses a GUI to help you updated the /etc/fstab (which, of course, you could do manually with a text editor on both client and server).

Also, go to the Connect To Server option on the Go menu..

type::

NFS://hostname.domain.com/[share name]

and the directory/folder will just pop up in a finder window as long as you get the NFS share name correct (case sensitive).

Wow you guys are awesome the help I am getting on this is more than worth the subscription to the service.

Some Answers:
Nappy_D: No insult taken. We don't used the extended network because we would lose 2 tools we rely on. Time Machine & Spotlight. In our environment we need the versioned back up of Time Machine for 3 important reasons:

1. The ohS**t moment when you realize you have hit save rather than save as. Not super common, but it happens enough. With Time Machine I can restore to a previous version from an hour ago, yesterday afternoon, or 2 weeks ago. It takes 90 seconds and we are back to working on the file. VERY important in a deadline driven environment.

2. Our client walks in and says, "I know I asked you to revamp those 8 pages, but I changed my mind. Can we just go back to the way it was last week." This happens FAR too often in our company. Once again Time Machine to the resuce. I can even restore an older file AND keep a copy of the newer one, Merge the 2 docs and still make my deadline.

3. We manage it ourselves. No need to put in a service request and wait while they restore a tape backup. Any one of our users with access to the server can fix it in minutes.

We also rely on Spotlight heavily for its ability to index not only file names but the contents in files. "Find out when XProduct appeared in what catalog and when," That search takes minutes with spotlight. Not so much with our Windows Based Network Shares.

Could I LIVE without this technology, yes. But it would like walking with crutches.

So our server must run OS X.

Roylong: I will do some investigation into NFS and how to implement including the software you suggested.


Now back to my original question which still has not been answered.

Any suggestions for software that can check the throughput so I can figure out what the hiccup is with this server?

Very helpful with a question that ended up being more like 3 questions.