I’ve been a Dropbox user for some time, and as disk-slinger in a former life, I really enjoy reading the company’s tech blog. This post on cloud storage abstraction with Object Store was great.
Data breaches – everyone’s having them. Are you missing out? It’s probably just a matter of time. While you’re waiting, check out this article from Preston – John Proctor and Data Breaches.
It’s always sad when a startup stops. Mellor writes that Pavilion Data – last NVMe over Fabrics flash array startup – has died. I had the opportunity to take the kit for a spin in a previous role, and spent some time with some of their people. Smart folks doing interesting things. I hope those impacted land on their feet.
I always enjoy talking to Chris about his Plex setup, because he’s taken it to the next level. Here’s a great article he put together on how to automate lighting with Plex playback.
Finally, our old friend VMware vCenter Converter is back. You can download it from here.
TL;DR – I have no idea why this is happening as frequently as it is, what’s causing it, or how to stop it. So I’m using AFP for the moment.
Background
I run a Plex server on my Mac mini 2018 running macOS Catalina 10.15.6. I have all of my media stored on a QNAP TS-831X NAS running QTS 4.4.3.1400 with volumes connected to macOS over SMB. This has worked reasonably well with Catalina for the last year (?) or so, but with the latest Catalina update I’ve had frequent (as in every few hours) disconnections from the shares. I’ve tried a variety of fixes, and thought I’d document them here. None of them really worked, so what I’m hoping is that someone with solid macOS chops will be able to tell me what I’m doing wrong.
Possible Solutions
QNAP and SMB
I made sure I was running the latest QNAP firmware version. I noticed in the latest release notes for 4.4.3.1381 that it fixed a problem where “[u]sers could not mount NAS shared folders and external storage devices at the same time on macOS via SMB”. This wasn’t quite the issue I was experiencing, but I was nonetheless hopeful. This was not the case. This thread talked about SMB support levels. I was running my shares with support for SMB 2.1 through 3.0. I’ve since changed that to 3.0 only. No dice.
macOS
This guy on this thread thinks he’s nailed it. He may have, but not for me. I’ve included some of the text for reference below.
Performance mode changes the system parameters of your Mac. These changes take better advantage of your hardware for demanding server applications. A Mac that needs to run high-performance services can turn on performance mode to dedicate additional system resources for server applications.
“Solution:
1 – First check to see if server performance mode is enabled on your machine using this Terminal command. You should see the command return serverperfmode=1 if it is enabled.
nvram boot-args
2 – If you do not see serverperfmode=1 returned, enter this following line of code to enable it. (I recommend rebooting your system afterwards)
I’ve also tried changing the power settings on the Mac mini, and disabled power nap. No luck there either. I’ve also tried using the FQDN of the NAS as opposed to the short name of the device when I map the drives. Nope, nothing.
Solution
My QNAP still supports Apple File Protocol, and it supports multiple protocols for the same share. So I turned on AFP and mapped the drives that way. I’m pleased to say that I haven’t had the shares disconnect since (and have thus had a much smoother Plex experience), but I’m sad to say that this is the only solution I have to offer for the moment. And if your storage device doesn’t support AFP? Sod knows. I haven’t tried doing it via NFS, but I’ve heard reports that NFS was its own special bin fire in recent versions of Catalina. It’s an underwhelming situation, and maybe one day I’ll happen across the solution. And I can share it here and we can all do a happy dance.
Welcome to Random Short Take #31. Lot of good players have worn 31 in the NBA. You’d think I’d call this the Reggie edition (and I appreciate him more after watching Winning Time), but this one belongs to Brent Barry. This may be related to some recency bias I have, based on the fact that Brent is a commentator in NBA 2K19, but I digress …
I find Plex to be a pretty rock solid application experience, and most of the problems I’ve had with it have been client-related. I recently had a problem with a server update that borked my installation though, and had to roll back. Here’s the quick and dirty way to do that on macOS.
I recently had the chance to speak with Michael Jack from Datadobi about the company’s announcement about its new DIY Starter Pack for NAS migrations. Whilst it seems that the professional services market for NAS migrations has diminished over the last few years, there’s still plenty of data out there that needs to be moved from on box to another. Robocopy and rsync aren’t always the best option when you need to move this much data around.
There are a bunch of things that people need to learn to do operations well. A lot of them are learnt the hard way. This is a great list from Jan Schaumann.
Analyst firms are sometimes misunderstood. My friend Enrico Signoretti has been working at GigaOm for a little while now, and I really enjoyed this article on the thinking behind the GigaOm Radar.
Alastair isn’t just a great writer and moustache aficionado, he’s also a trainer across a number of IT disciplines, including AWS. He recently posted this useful article on what AWS newcomers can expect when it comes to managing EC2 instances.
New year, same old format for news bites. This is #28 – the McKinnie Edition. I always thought Alfonzo looked a bit like that cop in The Deuce. Okay – it’s clear that some of these numbers are going to be hard to work with, but I’ll keep it going for a little while longer (the 30s are where you find a lot of the great players).
In what seems like pretty big news, Veeam has been acquired by Insight Partners. You can read the press release here, and Anton Gostev shares his views on it here.
This one looks like a bit of a science project, but I find myself oddly intrigued by it. You can read the official announcement here. Pre-orders are open now, and I’ll report back some time in March or April when / if the box turns up.
I loved this article from Chin-Fah on ransomware and NAS environments. I’m looking forward to catching up with Chin-Fah next week (along with all of the other delegates) at Storage Field Day 19. Tune in here if you want to see us on camera.
Speaking of ransomware, this article from Joey D’Antoni provided some great insights into the problem and what we can do about it.
A lot of my friends overseas are asking about the bush fires in Australia. There’s a lot in the media about it, and this article about the impact on infrastructure from Preston made for some thought-provoking reading.
I still use Plex heavily, and spend a lot of time moving things from optical discs to my NAS. This article covers a lot of the process I use too. I’ve started using tinyMediaManager as well – it’s pretty neat.
All the kids (and vendor executives) are talking about Kubernetes. It’s almost like we’re talking about public cloud or big data. Inspired in part by what he saw at Cloud Field Day 6, Keith weighs in on the subject here and I recommend you take the time to read (and understand) what he’s saying.
I enjoy reading Justin’s disclosure posts, even when he throws shade on my state (“Queensland is Australia’s Florida”). Not that he’s wrong, mind you.
Here are a few links to some random news items and other content that I recently found interesting. You might find them interesting too. Episode 16 – please enjoy these semi-irregular updates.
Scale Computing has been doing a bit in the healthcare sector lately – you can read news about that here.
This was a nice roundup of the news from Apple’s recent WWDC from Six Colors. Hat tip to Stephen Foskett for the link. Speaking of WWDC news, you may have been wondering what happened to all of your purchased content with the imminent demise of iTunes on macOS. It’s still a little fuzzy, but this article attempts to shed some light on things. Spoiler: you should be okay (for the moment).
There’s a great post on the Dropbox Tech Blog from James Cowling discussing the mission versus the system.
The more things change, the more they remain the same. For years I had a Windows PC running Media Center and recording TV. I used IceTV as the XMLTV-based program guide provider. I then started to mess about with some HDHomeRun devices and the PC died and I went back to a traditional DVR arrangement. Plex now has DVR capabilities and it has been doing a reasonable job with guide data (and recording in general), but they’ve decided it’s all a bit too hard to curate guides and want users (at least in Australia) to use XMLTV-based guides instead. So I’m back to using IceTV with Plex. They’re offering a free trial at the moment for Plex users, and setup instructions are here. No, I don’t get paid if you click on the links.
Speaking of axe-throwing, the Cohesity team in Queensland is organising a social event for Friday 21st June from 2 – 4 pm at Maniax Axe Throwing in Newstead. You can get in contact with Casey if you’d like to register.
VeeamON Forum Australia is coming up soon. It will be held at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Sydney on July 24th and should be a great event. You can find out more information and register for it here. The Vanguards are also planning something cool, so hopefully we’ll see you there.
There’s a lot of talk and slideware devoted to digital transformation, and a lot of it is rubbish. But I found this article from Chin-Fah to be particularly insightful.
VMworld US kicks off shortly. I won’t be there this year, but I’m looking forward to hearing all the VMware-related news coming from the show.
The NBA season schedule is now locked in for 2018-19. Here’s a printable version of the Lakers schedule. I imagine this will be an amusing, if not always successful season.
I spent more time than I should putting media into my Plex environment, and have been looking for ways to optimise the experience. This series of articles by Carolyn Van Slyck has inspired me to do some more work on my transcode workflow. I’m also looking at doing something like this or this to automatically ingest the media in the first place.
(Site sponsor) Vembu recently announced Vembu BDR Essentials for Small Businesses. You can read more about that here.
Welcome to the sixth edition of the Random Short Take. Here are a few links to a few things that I think might be useful, to someone.
I’m a big fan of Plex, and recently moved it from my iMac onto a Debian-based NAS. There’s a comprehensive Linux Permissions Guide that you can get here. It came in handy because I have a number of NAS devices serving up media. And you don’t want to see what I did to get multiple volumes mounted via SMB. (It gets ugly when I want the DVR component to be able to record to any share)
A lady named Wendy asked me to link to her article because I’d mentioned some of the environmental work Dell EMC had done previously, so here you go Wendy – Plastic Is Killing our Oceans
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
