h17613 WP Powerscale Mac Os Performance Optimization

PowerScale OneFS: macOS Client Performance
and User Experience Optimization

December 2022
H17613.2
White Paper
Abstract
This document describes performance and user-experience
optimizations for Apple macOS 11 (Big Sur) and 12 (Monterey) with the
Dell Technologies PowerScale storage platform.
Dell Technologies
Copyright
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to the information in this publication, and specifically disclaims implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular
purpose.
Use, copying, and distribution of any software described in this publication requires an applicable software license.
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of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. Other trademarks may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Published in the USA December 2022 H17613.2.
Dell Inc. believes the information in this document is accurate as of its publication date. The information is subject to change
without notice.
2 PowerScale OneFS: macOS Client Performance and User Experience Optimization

Contents
Contents
Executive summary ........................................................................................................................ 4
Recommended Settings for PowerScale and macOS .................................................................. 6
Network storage protocols and macOS ........................................................................................ 7
Using Apple internal 10GBASE-T NICs with PowerScale OneFS ............................................... 8
Disabling Apple SMB extensions in OneFS.................................................................................. 9
Setting boot arguments in macOS .............................................................................................. 10
Preventing .DS_Store files on network shares........................................................................... 13
Delayed acknowledgments in macOS ......................................................................................... 14
Edits to /etc/nsmb.conf ................................................................................................................. 15
Spotlight search of network shares ............................................................................................ 18
Flow control and macOS .............................................................................................................. 20
macOS network storage performance issues ............................................................................ 21
Examining SMB mounts with smbutil ......................................................................................... 24
References ..................................................................................................................................... 26
PowerScale OneFS: macOS Client Performance and User Experience Optimization 3

Executive summary
Executive summary
OneFS and Apple client systems running macOS are widely used in environments where PowerScale
macOS OneFS is the primary shared storage platform. This guide provides performance-tuning,
and user-experience tweaks focused on macOS 11 (Big Sur) and macOS 12 (Monterey)
when used with PowerScale OneFS 9.x.
The tunings in this guide provide advice for controlling macOS behavior when interacting
with PowerScale storage. It is meant to allow administrators the ability squeeze the
maximum performance out of the Apple client. Usually, the settings in this guide will not
“fix” an environment where performance is unstable or unusable. In those cases, there are
likely issues going on that are beyond the tuning advice in this guide. See troubleshooting
advice in the section macOS network storage performance issues for some
recommendations.
Historically, many optimizations were necessary on macOS to achieve maximum

performance from network storage. These included adjustments such as Send and
Receive Windows, Window Scaling, Inflight Bandwidth Calculation, TCP Slow Start, and
others. Fortunately, many such optimizations are no longer necessary due to
improvements in how macOS dynamically autotunes its network performance.
The following performance optimizations and user experience changes are covered in this
document:
• Memory allocation to network stack, including changes to default nvram boot-args
• Settings in com.apple.desktopservices
▪ Preventing .DS_Store files
• Edits to /etc/sysctl.conf
• Edits to /etc/nsmb.conf
▪ SMB signing
▪ SMB session signing
▪ SMB notifications
▪ Force protocol version
▪ Alternate data streams (named Streams)
▪ Apple SMB extensions
▪ Force SMB multichannel to prefer wired connections
• Spotlight search
▪ Why it is possible but a bad idea
• Ethernet flow control
No single optimization is right for every environment. To take advantage of the tuning
parameters outlined in this paper, testing is critical to determine how each change affects
the performance of storage clients and their unique workloads.

Executive summary
Audience This guide assumes the reader is proficient with macOS, the macOS command-line
interface, and UNIX style operating systems in general. It is written with storage and IT
administrators in mind.
Revisions Date Description
February 2019 Initial release
March 2019 Minor updates
April 2019 Updates on .DS_Store and flow control
June 2021 Updated for macOS 10.15 and 11. Added troubleshooting advice
December 2022 Updated for macOS 11.7 and 12.6
We value your Dell Technologies and the authors of this document welcome your feedback on this
feedback document. Contact the Dell Technologies team by email.
Author: Gregory Shiff
Contributors: Simon Haywood, Rafal Szczesniak
Special Thanks: Thomas Berglund
Note: For links to other documentation for this topic, see PowerScale OneFS: Info Hubs.

Recommended Settings for PowerScale and macOS
Recommended Settings for PowerScale and macOS
On the • Disabling Apple SMB extensions

PowerScale ▪ It is counterintuitive, but the current state of Apple extensions causes large
OneFS Cluster directory listings and opening of complex projects to be slow. Disabling Apple
extensions on the PowerScale cluster disables them for all clients, avoiding the
individual operating system behavior.
• Increase the net.inet.tcp.reass.maxqueuelen setting to 2048.
▪ This change assumes that the PowerScale cluster is on a private, secure
network. This change is unnecessary for macOS 11+. However, when using
the internal 10GBASE-T network interface on Apple hardware, failure to change
this value can cause difficult to diagnose performance issues on older versions
of macOS.
On the macOS • Connect to the PowerScale cluster using the SMB protocol.
client system • Boot into Recovery Mode, enable ServerPerfMode (Intel Macs only) and increase
network buffer allocation.
▪ The default settings of the macOS network stack are not optimized for network
storage performance. Making these changes means that the Apple system will
devote more resources to networking.
• Use the defaults command to force macOS to ignore and not create DS_Store files
on network shares.
▪ Along with disabling Apple extensions on the PowerScale cluster, this
optimization can greatly improve listing large directories in macOS Finder.
− Listing the contents of large directories is more efficient in macOS 11 than
in macOS 12.
• If connecting by 10GbE or higher, change delayed_ack to 0
▪ The default setting of 3 can degrade performance with networks greater than 1
GbE
▪ macOS 11 ignores changes made in /etc/sysctl.conf. A launchd script
could be used to enforce the change.
▪ macOS 12 respects changes to delayed_ack in the /etc/sysctl.conf file.
• Configure the following changes to /etc/nsmb.conf
▪ Disable SMB signing
− SMB signing is disabled by default, but given the performance implications,
it is best to hard code this setting.
▪ Disable SMB Session signing
− Reduce the incidence of password and connectivity problems.
▪ Force SMB protocol version to SMB3 only

Network storage protocols and macOS
− SMB3 is the preferred protocol for macOS. If for some reason the client
cannot connect by SMB3, it may be better to have the mount fail and trigger
further investigation.
▪ Set SMB3 multichannel to prefer wired connections
− Having a macOS system try to connect by Wi-Fi when a wired connection
is available will negatively impact performance.
• Disable Spotlight search on the network share
▪ Unless necessary, Spotlight search can lead to performance degradation on
network shares with even small numbers of macOS clients.
On the network • Enable flow control both RX and TX for all macOS clients and PowerScale front-
switches end ports.
▪ Lack of flow control can cause of out of order packets in macOS which can lead
to performance problems.
Network storage protocols and macOS
Network storage macOS supports three network protocols: AFP, SMB, and NFS. There is some support for
protocols FTP in macOS, but that is out of scope for this document.
AFP is unsupported by PowerScale, and since macOS 10.9, AFP is not the default file-
sharing protocol for macOS. As such, it is not covered in this document.
Historically, NFS was the protocol of choice for connecting macOS systems to
PowerScale. NFS is no longer the best choice for macOS. Testing described in this paper
concluded that SMB is as performant, and often more performant, than NFS on macOS.
SMB is the protocol of choice for macOS clients connecting to PowerScale storage. This
paper shows that SMB consistently outperformed NFS on macOS, and describes
additional topics:
• Alternate data streams (named streams) support

▪ PowerScale has robust support for macOS resource fork data stored through
alternate data streams over SMB.
▪ OneFS does not support macOS clients writing resource fork data to alternate
data streams over NFS.
• Full ACL support
▪ SMB fully supports file system ACLs for fine-grained control of file access
permissions.
▪ OneFS supports NFSv4 ACLs which can be used on macOS, but because they
can introduce further complexity, especially in multiprotocol, multiplatform
environments, they are not recommended).
SMB3 SMB multichannel is a major advantage of SMB3. PowerScale OneFS 7.1.1+ supports
Multichannel SMB3 multichannel by default. Apple has introduced SMB3 multichannel support as of

Using Apple internal 10GBASE-T NICs with PowerScale OneFS
macOS 11.3+. Apple describes this functionality in the following KB article: Configure
SMB Multichannel behavior.
SMB multichannel provides two features, failover between network links and additional
throughput.
Testing for this paper indicates that failover works as expected in macOS 11.3+. A
macOS client was configured with two 40GbE links to a OneFS file system (using an
ATTO Thunderlink adapter). While the macOS client was playing back several streams of
video from a OneFS storage volume, one of the network links was pulled from the switch.
The video continued playing smoothly with few or no dropped frames.
However, when that network link was reestablished, the macOS client did not always
recognize it. Usually the network file system had to be unmounted, and the user had to
log out and back into their account for the macOS client to reestablish the second link.
Multiple Ethernet connections to the storage only resulted in a small increase of

aggregate throughput. Testing with 2x 10 GbE links to a OneFS file system showed
approximately a 10% read improvement and a 20% write improvement. Testing with 2x 40
GbE links to the same file system showed little or no read and write throughput
improvement. SMB multichannel support is new in macOS, and it is likely that over time
the throughput benefits will improve.
The above Apple KB article on SMB multichannel behavior includes several

/etc/nsmb.conf settings that impact how macOS uses this feature. Because SMB
multichannel is enabled by default in OneFS, it is recommended to set macOS to use
wired Ethernet links for SMB Multichannel. Using wireless connections for SMB
multichannel could incur significant performance penalties.
To force macOS 11.3+ to prefer wired connections for SMB multichannel, add the
following line to the /etc/nsmb.conf file:
mc_prefer_wired=yes
See Setting boot argument in macOS in this document for more information about
creating and editing /etc/nsmb.conf.
Using Apple internal 10GBASE-T NICs with PowerScale OneFS
Apple software Before macOS 11, there were significant software driver issues with the integrated
driver problems 10GBASE-T NICs in Apple hardware. A change in OneFS to protect against certain kinds
of Denial of Service (DOS) attacks resulted in poor performance for Apple systems using
integrated 10GBASE-T NICs. Fortunately, the macOS driver issues are resolved in
macOS 11.
For users of older versions of macOS, there can be difficult to diagnose performance
problems when using the internal 10GBASE-T NICs in Apple hardware. Fortunately, there
is a change that can be made in OneFS that can improve performance for these older
macOS systems.

Disabling Apple SMB extensions in OneFS
Updating Updating the PowerScale cluster setting of net.inet.tcp.reass.maxqueulen to 2048

maxqueuelen resolves these performance problems. This change is unnecessary for macOS 11+ users.
The procedure for making the change is outlined in the following Dell KB article (login
required): Sysctl Security Change Can Affect TCP Performance On Degraded Networks
OneFS v8.1.0+.
Increasing net.inet.tcp.reass.maxqueulen can make the PowerScale cluster

more vulnerable to certain DOS attacks, but if the PowerScale cluster is on a secure,
private network, the risk is minimal.
To view the current setting of net.inet.tcp.reass.maxqueuelen, run the following

CLI command (default value is 100) from OneFS:
sysctl net.inet.tcp.reass.maxqueuelen
Temporarily change the value on a particular PowerScale node:
sysctl net.inet.tcp.reass.maxqueuelen=2048
Have the clients check the network to confirm that the performance issue has been
resolved. The change should be immediate: the macOS clients do not need to
unmount/remount the volume.
If the issue is resolved, change the value for the whole cluster on reboot by editing the
following file:
/etc/mcp/defaults/sysctl.conf
If the sysctl exists, edit that line. If it is not in the file, add these lines to the bottom of the
file:
net.inet.tcp.reass.maxqueuelen=2048
Push the change to all nodes in the cluster:
isi_sysctl_cluster net.inet.tcp.reass.maxqueuelen=2048
Disabling Apple SMB extensions in OneFS
About Apple Apple has added several macOS-specific features to their implementation of SMB.
SMB extensions Primarily, these features address the handling of file metadata stored in alternate data
streams as described previously. OneFS supports these features:
ReadDirAttr: This feature changes how macOS handles reads of file metadata stored in
an alternate data stream when listing the contents of large directories. Finder info, access
rights, and resource fork size are returned more efficiently for the files in the directory.
OsxCopyFile: With the SMB2 protocol, Microsoft implemented server-side optimizations

when copying files between directories on the file share. The extension introduced by
Apple ensures that all Apple-specific file metadata is properly copied along with the file
itself. The copy process is also simplified because it is performed in one request, as

Setting boot arguments in macOS
opposed to splitting the requests into logical chunks. When performing a large server-side
copy, the macOS Finder ignores updates from the server. During these copies, the Finder
copy progress bar does not update and may appear to have stopped responding. When
the copy finishes, the progress bar snaps to complete.
In versions 10.13+, macOS has changed how it interacts with SMB servers to pull
directory file listings. Unintuitively, the Apple SMB extensions can slow performance in
workflows that have directories with high file counts or elaborate project files (such as
complicated video edit projects). Disabling Apple extensions in OneFS improves
performance in those situations.
Disabling Apple It is not possible to disable Apple-specific SMB extensions from the Apple client in macOS
extensions on 10.15 and later. Instead, the Apple extensions must be disabled on the OneFS storage
the PowerScale cluster itself. To disable Apple SMB extensions in OneFS, run the following command
cluster from the OneFS CLI:
isi_gconfig \
registry.Services.lwio.Parameters.Drivers.srv.smb2.EnableAppleExte
nsions=0
The following screen captures show the file share information before and after Apple
extensions were disabled. Notice that before the extensions are disabled, macOS
identifies PowerScale as a fully native file share, while afterwards, PowerScale shows up
as an NTFS share. NTFS is the preferred setting.
Boot arguments Several boot arguments (boot-args) can be configured to increase the amount of system
resources allocated to network performance in macOS. These include increasing network
buffer size and enabling ServerPerfMode (Intel Macs only).
Configuring boot-args must be done from the macOS terminal while the system is booted
into Recovery Mode. Apple describes the process of booting to recovery mode in the
article Mac startup key combinations.
To view boot-args, run the following terminal command:

nvram boot-args
Setting boot-args explicitly from the command line will overwrite existing boot-args. Apple
provides sample code in the KB article about ServerPerfMode that uses sed and cut to
append existing boot-args to newly set ones. The example in that article is for
ServerPerfMode, and can be adapted for other settings such as ncl.
Client systems have a finite amount of resources. Allocating additional system resources
to the network stack means that there is less RAM and CPU available for other purposes.
Administrators need to be aware of the implications of changing the defaults (as outlined
below), and should be prepared to roll the changes back if the client systems become
constrained.
Increase network Increasing the amount of memory that macOS allocates for network buffering can
memory increase throughput for network connections greater than 1 GbE.
allocation
Depending on the total system memory and the network connection type, various values
can be set. 512 MB may be the logical maximum.
After booting into recovery mode, launch the Terminal application and use the following
commands to add a boot argument. This command will overwrite any existing boot-args:
nvram boot-args="ncl=262144"
This setting is the number of 2 KB clusters assigned to the network buffer and is
calculated as follows:
(262,144 * 2) / 1,024 = 512 MB
After setting this nvram boot argument, reboot the macOS system for the changes to take
effect. When the Mac has rebooted, run the following terminal command to verify the boot
argument:
nvram boot-args
To remove boot-args settings, run the following terminal command:
nvram -d boot-args
Configure ServerPerfMode updates various sysctl settings in macOS to increase system resources
ServerPerfMode available to the network stack. While the name suggests that this setting is aimed at Apple
(Intel Macs only) systems being used as servers, testing has shown that client systems also benefit by
enabling ServerPerfMode. In one example, a video file in the Canon C200 codec at 50
MBps (400mbps) would not play back smoothly until ServerPerfMode was enabled. The
system dropped frames despite both the Apple hardware and PowerScale storage
providing more than enough performance, and other heavier codecs playing fine.
Apple does not provide specific documentation about all the changes enabled by
ServerPerfMode. The only documentation about how to enable it is: Turn on performance
mode for macOS Server.

There is some discussion online about some of the sysctl changes that take place, such
as this discussion on apple.stackexchange.com. The exact changes may largely depend
on the total amount of RAM in the Apple system. One way to check would be to run the
command sysctl -a from the CLI before and after the change, dumping the output to
two text files to compare.
To enable ServerPerfMode, boot the Apple client system into Recovery Mode. When in
Recovery Mode, run the following command from the Terminal application (existing boot
arguments will be overwritten):
nvram boot-args=”serverperfmode=1”
Appending Boot In this KB article about enabling ServerPerfMode, Apple provides terminal commands to
Arguments add new boot-args without overwriting existing boot-args. Below are those commands
adapted for both ServerPerfMode and ncl. All commands assume that the Apple system is
booted into Recovery Mode.
To set both ServerPerfMode and ncl simultaneously, overwriting existing boot-args, run
the following command from macOS Terminal:
nvram boot-args=”serverperfmode=1 ncl=262144”
To remove all boot-args simultaneously:
nvram -d boot-args
To enable ServerPerfMode and keep existing boot-args:
nvram boot-args="serverperfmode=1 $(nvram boot-args 2>/dev/null |

cut -f 2-)"
To disable ServerPerfMode and keep existing boot-args:
nvram boot-args="$(nvram boot-args 2>/dev/null | sed -e \

$'s/boot-args\t//;s/serverperfmode=1//')"
To update the ncl setting and keep existing boot-args:
nvram boot-args="ncl=262144 $(nvram boot-args 2>/dev/null | cut -f

2-)"
To remove the ncl setting and keep existing boot args:

$'s/boot-args\t//;s/ncl=262144//')"
To update both ServerPerfMode and ncl simultaneously while keeping existing boot-args:
nvram boot-args="serverperfmode=1 ncl=262144 $(nvram boot-args

2>/dev/null \
| cut -f 2-)"
To remove both ServerPerfMode and ncl settings simultaneously while keeping other
boot-args:

Preventing .DS_Store files on network shares

$'s/boot-args\t//;s/serverperfmode=1//;s/ncl=262144//')"
Preventing .DS_Store files on network shares
Defaults The way macOS Finder treats directories accessed through SMB can be changed by
command using the CLI defaults command to update preferences in
com.apple.desktopservices.
Apple has outlined this behavior in the support article Adjust SMB browsing behavior in
macOS High Sierra 10.13 and later.
Users must log out and log in again for changes to take effect.
.DS_Store files The macOS Finder automatically creates .DS_Store files in every folder it accesses. This
on network file stores metadata about how to display that directory’s contents. The reading and
shares writing of these files can slow down performance when listing the contents of directories
with high file counts.
It is possible to prevent macOS from creating .DS_Store files on network shares in

macOS 10.13 and above. In the absence of a .DS_Store file, macOS will list the contents
of a folder in alphanumeric order only upon initial open. Listing folders in this way has
been shown to reduce the time for macOS to display the contents of directories with large
numbers of files.
The following macOS CLI command prevents macOS 10.14 and higher from reading or
creating .DS_Store files on network shares:
defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores

-bool TRUE
After running this command, you must log out, and log in for the changes to take effect.
For more information about .DS_Store files, see the DS_Store Wikipedia article.
Viewing The defaults command can also be used to view the contents of
com.apple.deskt com.apple.desktopservices to see if DSDontWriteNetworkStores has been configured.
op.services
defaults read com.apple.desktopservices
With a macOS client configured to not create .DS_Store files, the output will look similar to
this output:
ladmins-iMac-Pro:~ ladmin$ defaults read com.apple.desktopservices

{
DSDontWriteNetworkStores = 1;
}

Delayed acknowledgments in macOS
Delayed acknowledgments in macOS
TCP delayed_ack There are many explanations for TCP delayed acknowledgment (delayed_ack), as
described in the article TCP Performance problems caused by interaction between
Nagle’s Algorithm and Delayed ACK. For most uses of TCP, delayed acknowledgment is
a good thing and makes network communication more efficient. TCP acknowledgments
are added to subsequent data packets. However, in practice on macOS, particularly with
network connections greater than 10 GbE, TCP delayed acknowledgment can cause
performance degradation.
There are four options in macOS for setting the characteristics of delayed_ack:
• delayed_ack=0: Responds after every packet (OFF)
• delayed_ack=1: Always employs delayed_ack; 6 packets can get 1 ack
• delayed_ack=2: Immediate ack after 2nd packet; 2 packets per ack (Compatibility
Mode)
• delayed_ack=3: Should auto-detect when to employ delayed ack; 3 packets per ack
/etc/sysct.conf In macOS, the /etc/sysctl.conf file can be edited to change some default settings in
the operating system kernel at boot time. There is also a CLI command, sysctl, that when
run as root will make temporary changes to those same settings. To make the changes
persist across reboots, you must edit the /etc/sysctl.conf file. If the file is not
present on a system, use a text editor to create it. macOS 11 appears to ignore changes
made to /etc/sysctl.conf. macOS builds before and after macOS 11 respect
changes to /etc/sysctl.conf.
Delayed ack: In macOS 11, the default value is delayed_ack=3. Although it is possible to change this
macOS 11 value temporarily (by using the sysctl -w command, as shown in the section Changing
delayed_ack with /etc/sysctl.conf), the change does not persist across reboots. Values set
for delayed_ack in the sysctl.conf file are ignored in macOS 11.
If changing delay_ack to 0 is required, using another approach, such a launchd script

should be explored.
Delayed ack: The default setting for macOS 12 is delayed_ack=3. Testing has shown that in some
macOS 12 environments, particularly where the client is reading and writing simultaneously,
delayed_ack=0 improves performance. Rendering a video sequence is an example of
such behavior.
Changing To query the current setting of the client, enter the following at the macOS command line:
delayed_ack with
/etc/sysctl.conf $ sudo sysctl net.inet.tcp.delayed_ack
Example response:
net.inet.tcp.delayed_ack: 3
To temporarily change this setting, enter the following at the macOS command line:

Edits to /etc/nsmb.conf
$ sudo sysctl -w net.inet.tcp.delayed_ack=0
Example response:
net.inet.tcp.delayed_ack: 3 -> 0
To make the setting persist over a reboot (in macOS 12), edit the /etc/sysctl.conf
file on the macOS client:
Create or edit the file at /etc/sysctl.conf
Add the following line:
net.inet.tcp.delayed_ack=0
Reboot.
/etc/nsmb.conf The /etc/nsmb.conf file is a plain text file that offers configuration settings for how
macOS treats SMB shares. If this file is not present on a system, create it with a text
editor. The /etc/nsmb.conf file is divided into sections as outlined on its man page. For
these edits, defaults for all SMB shares need to be set. The first line in the file should be
[default], followed by the parameters and their values:
[default]
parameter=value
parameter2=value2
parameter3=value3
After updating /etc/nsmb.conf, unmount and remount SMB shares from the macOS
system for the changes to take effect.
SMB signing Packet signing increases the security of SMB connections by helping prevent man-in-the-
middle attacks. Essentially, a digital signature attached to each packet helps the client
system confirm that data has not been tampered with while in transit.
Packet signing is enabled by default in OneFS and is also the default behavior for SMB2
and SMB3 connections on macOS versions 10.11.5 through 10.13.3. Later versions of
Apple’s documentation leave doubt as to when SMB signing is enabled. This archived KB
article HT205926 states:
Packet signing for SMB 2 or SMB 3 connections turns on automatically when

needed if the server offers it.
The extra overhead of packet signing can cause significant performance degradation on
the latency-sensitive, high-performance workloads common to PowerScale OneFS. The
security risks posed by man-in-the-middle attacks need to be assessed for each
environment. When possible, it is recommended that these workflows take place on
private, secure networks, and that packet signing is disabled on the macOS client.

Testing for this paper showed that SMB signing was automatically enabled on the macOS
client when connecting to a native Apple file server. SMB signing did not get enabled
automatically when connecting to PowerScale OneFS (which also offers SMB signing).
Given the inconsistent nature of the SMB signing behavior in macOS, it is recommended
to manually disable the feature using the /etc/nsmb.conf file.
Apple outlines disabling SMB signing in the support article Turn off packet signing for
SMB 2 and SMB 3 connections.
To disable SMB signing on macOS, add the following entry to /etc/nsmb.conf:
signing_required=no
SMB session SMB3 introduces security enhancements that help prevent man-in-the-middle attacks
signing during the initiation of an SMB client connection to an SMB server. SMB session Signing
is different from SMB signing which adds a digital signature to each packet. SMB
session signing can be described as a way to protect an SMB session from being
tampering with as it commences. When macOS client systems are bound anonymously to
a directory server, SMB session signing may cause authentication errors when a system
tries to connect to an SMB share.
In situations where proper network credentials are not working from macOS systems
running version 10.13+, disabling SMB session signing may resolve the issue. As with
disabling SMB signing, disabling SMB session signing reduces the security of an SMB
connection and is recommended on systems running on private, secure networks.
Apple describes session signing and how to disable it in the support article If you can't
mount SMB share hosted by a Mac bound to Open Directory.
Add the following line to the /etc/nsmb.conf file:
validate_neg_off=yes
SMB change SMB change notifications provide macOS with updates or changes to mounted file
notifications shares. SMB notifications provided by PowerScale provide the macOS client with this
information in a OneFS environment. With a busy file share, the macOS Finder may
refresh itself frequently. Users may notice their file listings fluctuating or Finder windows
reset to the top-level directory while browsing. To avoid this behavior, it is possible to
disable the Finder from requesting SMB change notifications.
Applying this setting can break workflows that require SMB notifications for folder listings
to be current. For example, the collaborative Productions feature in Adobe Premiere Pro
relies on change notifications to be active on all clients participating in the Production.
Disabling change notifications can also lead to data corruption and other issues
where multiple users are accessing the same files and directories. As with all macOS

optimizations, great care and testing are required to ensure that enabling this setting does
not cause workflow problems.
To disable SMB notification, add the following line to the /etc/nsmb.conf file:
notify_off=yes
Force SMB Under certain circumstances, it may be desirable to force macOS to connect through a
protocol version particular version of SMB. The following edits to /etc/nsmb.conf force a particular
SMB version. macOS uses a binary bitmap to specify which version of SMB to use. Add
protocol_vers_map= with the appropriate value to force protocol types, as in the
following examples.
# Protocol version is specified using binary bitmap

# 1 => 0001 => SMB 1 only
# 2 => 0010 => SMB 2 only
# 3 => 0011 => SMB 1 or 2
# 4 => 0100 => SMB 3 only
# 6 => 0110 => SMB 2 or 3
# To Force SMB 3 only:

protocol_vers_map=4
# To Force SMB 2 or 3 only

protocol_vers_map=6
Enabling PowerScale OneFS supports storing Apple resource fork data transparently in an
alternate data alternate data stream, also called a named stream. The named stream prevents creation
streams (named of AppleDouble files, increases macOS performance when writing to OneFS, and helps
streams) prevent file corruption.
To better understand this feature, see the following background information.
When macOS stores a file, that file is composed of two forks. There is a resource fork
which contains extended attributes about the file itself, such as the file’s icon. There is
also a data fork which contains the file data. When macOS writes data to local file
systems such as HFS+ or APFS-formatted volumes, the resource fork data is stored in an
alternate data stream. The resource fork is not visible to users or systems accessing
those files; only the file itself is shown with all its associated metadata.
When macOS writes to a storage system that does not support alternate data streams,
the resource fork data still needs to be stored somewhere. In this case, macOS stores the
resource fork data in AppleDouble files. These files begin with ._ followed by the file
name. For example, saving a file called file.dat results in two files being created on the
file system: file.dat and ._file.dat. These “extra” files degrade performance because it
increases the file operations on the target storage system. File corruption can also
become an issue if a non-macOS system overwrites or deletes the AppleDouble files.

Spotlight search of network shares
As mentioned previously in this section, OneFS supports storing resource fork data in an
alternate data stream, which prevents the creation of AppleDouble files. It is the default
behavior of macOS 10.5+ to use an alternate data stream on an SMB server if the feature
is available (as it is on OneFS). When writing through NFS, macOS will revert to storing
resource fork data as AppleDouble files (another good reason always to use SMB with
macOS).
OneFS intelligently manages resource fork data so that even non-Apple systems
connected by NFS can interact with files created or used by SMB-connected macOS
systems.
It is not necessary to force macOS to use alternate data streams (the default since
macOS version 10.5). Nonetheless, some administrators feel more comfortable explicitly
enabling this feature in /etc/nsmb.conf by adding the following line:
streams=yes
The following archived support document outlines this functionality: Mac OS X v10.5,
v10.6: About named streams on SMB-mounted NAS, Mac OS X, and Windows servers; "-
36" or "-50" alerts may appear.
Prefer wired macOS 11.3 adds SMB3 multichannel support as described in Apple KB HT212277.
connections for Apple outlines a couple of settings to multichannel behavior that can be changed with
SMB /etc/nsmb.conf. One such setting is to force multichannel to prefer wired connections.
multichannel Due to the possible negative performance impacts of using Wi-Fi with SMB multichannel,
it is recommended to force macOS to prefer wired connections.
To force macOS 11.3 to prefer wired connections for SMB multichannel, add the following
line to /etc/nsmb.conf.
mc_prefer_wired=yes
Example The following shows an example of the /etc/nsmb.conf file.

/etc/nsmb.conf
Spotlight search Spotlight search of network volumes (including PowerScale OneFS) is possible in macOS
11 and 12, but there are significant performance implications to consider. Each individual
Apple client maintains its own local database of the network share. Having even a single
Apple client update its index of a file system will degrade performance for all users until
the index operation is complete. It is therefore recommended to disable Spotlight indexing
of all network shares.

To verify the status of Spotlight search of the PowerScale OneFS volume, run the
following terminal command from the Apple client:
mdutil -s /path/to/network/share/
Disable Spotlight The macOS process that maintains the Spotlight index, mdworker, is aggressive in
index of a building its database. Mdworker will begin creating this database quickly after being
mounted volume enabled. Even a few macOS systems could cause significant storage traffic and degrade
performance for other users.
When the OneFS file system is used for latency sensitive workflows, such as video
editing, Spotlight search should be disabled on network storage. For fast file system
search in those environments, alterative tools such as Dell DataIQ may be more
appropriate.
You can disable Spotlight indexing of a network volume in several ways.
From the macOS UI, add the network volume to the list at:
System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy
From the macOS command line, specify:
mdutil -i off /path/to/network/volume
or
mdutil -d /path/to/network/volume
Enabling To enable Spotlight search on the network share, follow this process from the Apple
Spotlight search client:
1. From the macOS UI, verify that the network volume is not listed:
System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy
2. From the macOS terminal, disable Spotlight for the network share:
sudo mdutil -i off /path/to/network/share
3. Erase any existing Spotlight index for that share:

sudo mdutil -E /path/to/network/share
4. Reenable Spotlight indexing for the share:

sudo mdutil -i on /path/to/network/volume
If enabling Spotlight search on the network volume fails, examine the permissions on the
share. They may need to be made more permissive.
When Spotlight indexing has begun, keep an eye on the mdworker process running on
the Apple client.

Flow control and macOS
The Apple client system stores a local index of the network volume on its internal storage.
Separate indexes are maintained for each network storage login and IP address. As a
result, it is conceivable that multiple indexes of the same network volume could reside on
a single Apple client. These indexes can grow large depending on the size and complexity
of the volume being scanned. The Spotlight index files for network storage are located
here:
/var/db/Spotlight-V100/LocalVolumes/
Note: As of macOS 12, listing the contents of this directory is not allowed.
Occasionally, users may find that Spotlight search of a network volume stops returning
fresh results. The only fix for a “broken” Spotlight index is to disable search, erase the
database, and reenable search, as outlined above.
Performing Spotlight search of network volumes is slightly different from how macOS users are used
Spotlight to using Spotlight.
searches of • Spotlight search results for network volumes do not show up using the macOS key
network volumes command “Command+Space bar”.
• Spotlight search results for network volumes do not show up in searches using the
Magnifying Glass icon in the upper right corner of the macOS Desktop.
• Spotlight search results only show up when searching from the search field in the
upper right corner of a macOS Finder window with the network share selected.
The following figure shows a Spotlight search for the term “autodesk” on the network
volume “Space”.
Flow control and macOS
Ethernet flow Flow control is an Ethernet traffic management system. It is primarily designed to reduce
control packet loss due to network congestion. Flow control functions by introducing Ethernet
pause frames into the network stream. The inner workings of flow control is a complex
topic that is beyond the scope of this document.
Testing has shown that the macOS network stack can easily be overrun by high-
performance network storage (such as PowerScale). This condition will result in a large
numbers of out of order packets during reads. Out of order packets result in inconsistent
read performance. Enabling flow control, both RX and TX, for the network switch ports to
which both the PowerScale storage and the Apple client machines are connected
alleviates this issue.
It is easy to diagnose if a lack of flow control is causing out of order packets on the
macOS client. The nettop CLI command in macOS displays a column labeled rx_ooo

macOS network storage performance issues
that shows the number of out of order packets. Use of this command is covered in the
section Observe macOS network statistics in this document. But to summarize, run the
following command from the macOS CLI:
nettop -m tcp -p kernel_task -J

interface,bytes_in,bytes_out,rx_dupe,rx_ooo,re-
tx,rtt_avg,rcvsize,unacked,tx_win
While that command is running, initiate a large read from the PowerScale cluster on the
macOS client, such as playing back a long video file. The rx_ooo value will increase
rapidly, and the counter may even reset during the read.
Enable flow control on both client and storage switch network ports and rerun the test.
The rx_ooo column will either stop increasing entirely or only by a few KiB.
Here is a partial screen capture of the output of that command:
Where to start? Administrators often arrive at this tuning guide when trying to solve macOS performance
problems. The settings outlined in this document can be the difference between average
macOS performance and exceptional performance. However, the recommendations in
this paper are not intended to “fix” environments where macOS systems are in an
unusable state. An exception is the change of net.inet.tcp.reass.maxqueuelen for older
versions of macOS, which does make a huge difference. Also enabling flow control on the
network switch can greatly improve inconsistent performance.
The good news is that a fresh install of macOS 11+ connected to a PowerScale cluster
works reasonably well with no tuning whatsoever. An untuned macOS client should be
able to browse the file system, open, read, and write files.
The question arises of where to start when macOS systems are slow to browse the file
system, will not open or save files, and video playback is dropping frames. The trick here
is to reduce complexity in the system, get back to a known good state, and work
backwards to the user’s end state. Determining where the problem lies (storage, network,
client) is nontrivial in the best of circumstances. The following suggestions have helped
administrators track down their problems and answer those challenging questions.
Reduce The network itself is often the biggest source of complexity in a production environment.
complexity Removing as much of the network as possible between the client and storage is a good
first step.
• If possible, connect the macOS client directly into one of the PowerScale front-end
network ports.

▪ Otherwise connect the macOS system into the same switch as the PowerScale
front-end ports.
▪ If plugged through a switch, verify that flow control (RX and TX) is enabled for
all macOS and storage ports.
• Verify that the macOS system is on the same subnet and VLAN as the PowerScale
and that no routing is required for the client system to access the storage.
• Use standard 1500 MTU size. Also, confirm that ping times between the macOS
client and PowerScale are low (and conversely).
▪ 9000 MTU can provide extra performance in macOS for the most demanding
workflows. Unfortunately, 9000 MTU often causes more problems than it solves
due to MTU mismatch on the network. Having all devices work well using 1500
MTU first and then experimenting with 9000 MTU is the recommended path.
If good performance is achieved with these steps, try advancing one network hop at a
time to determine where functionality breaks down and efforts must be focused.
Simplify the Did the system ever work as intended? Or did something change to “break” performance?
client Reimaging the macOS client back to a known good state is another thing to try:
• Using Recovery Mode, reimage the client back to a base install of macOS.
• Reinstall any third-party network drivers.
▪ Verify the latest driver version and macOS compatibility. Unfortunately, it is
common for new versions of macOS to break compatibility.
• Verify speed of Thunderbolt cables and which Thunderbolt ports are in use.
▪ Thunderbolt 1 and Thunderbolt 2 cables look physically identical but provide
different types of performance. Using Thunderbolt 1 cables with Thunderbolt 2
compatible devices will not realize the full performance capabilities of
PowerScale or the Apple client.
− Thunderbolt speeds can be checked from Apple menu > About this Mac
> System Report > Thunderbolt
▪ This ATTO technical bulletin shows which Thunderbolt ports to use on various
types of Apple hardware to avoid disconnects and performance issues: ATTO
Technical Bulletin January 2020.
Observe macOS From the macOS terminal, the nettop command is an easy way to observe periodically
network updated network statistics (default interval 1 second). The feedback provided by nettop
statistics can be helpful to understand how the macOS client is communicating with network
storage during certain application workloads. The following command shows macOS TCP
behavior for the kernel_task process, which is the parent process for all SMB
connections on TCP port 445:
nettop -m tcp -p kernel_task -J

interface,bytes_in,bytes_out,rx_dupe,rx_ooo,re-
tx,rtt_avg,rcvsize,unacked,tx_win

Key metrics to look at, when analyzing network statistics with nettop are:
• rtt_avg – Round-Trip Time average (latency)
▪ Should be as low as possible. If there are spikes above 10 milliseconds,
bandwidth and performance will be negatively impacted. TCP and especially
SMB traffic over TCP are sensitive to latency.
• rx_ooo – Out of order TCP packets
▪ Can be a sign of the client not being able to reassemble packets.
• re-tx – TCP Retransmits
▪ Can be a sign of latency or packet loss.
• rx_dupe – TCP Duplicate ACKs
▪ The higher the latency is, the more Duplicate ACKs will appear.
High latency or large amounts of out of order packets will degrade performance. Either of
these issues could be the result of operating system or driver issues on the Apple client.
Other causes could be network issues between the client and storage, or latency
problems on a software or hardware-related layer such as intermittently busy or queued
up disks.
To confirm if high latency is related to SMB read or write requests, you can try capturing
Wireshark/tcpdump trace files with a capture filter for port 445. When the capture is
stopped, look at Statistics > Service Response Time > SMB2, and look out for high
MAX SRT values. Details about Wireshark and tcpdump are out of scope for this paper.
Before going down the rabbit hole of analyzing TCP packets, try to simplify the
environment (as outlined above). Reducing the number of variables between the client
and the storage system is a good starting point.
The following figure shows the output of the nettop command. (Note that the relevant
output is well below the column headings.)

Examining SMB mounts with smbutil
smbutil output The macOS CLI utility smbutil can provide useful information about what features are
available and enabled on SMB-mounted file shares. The following command displays
information about mounted SMB shares and their supported features:
smbutil statshares -a
Running this command helps administrators verify that edits made to /etc/nsmb.conf
have taken effect. It shows information about the SMB that is not available elsewhere in
macOS.
The following shows sample output of this command on a macOS 11 system while
connecting to a PowerScale cluster running OneFS 9.4. Apple Extensions have been
disabled on the PowerScale cluster, and the macOS client has been forced to use SMB3.

Observe SMB3 The smbutil command also has arguments for observing SMB3 multichannel operation.
multichannel These commands can be used to verify that SMB multichannel is functional and that the
appropriate NICs are involved in the multiple connections. Here is a sample command:
smbutil multichannel -m /path/to/network/share -c
The following is an example partial output. Notice that macOS is misreporting the speed
of the links (they are 25GbE). This incorrect report does not impact the real network
speed.

References
References
Dell The following Dell Technologies documentation provides other information related to this
Technologies document. Access to these documents depends on your login credentials. If you do not
documentation have access to a document, contact your Dell Technologies representative.
• PowerScale OneFS: Adobe Premiere Best Practices
• PowerScale OneFS: DaVinci Resolve Best Practices
• PowerScale OneFS: Autodesk Flame Best Practices
• PowerScale OneFS: Info Hubs
Apple KB The following Apple documentation provides additional information:

Articles • Configure SMB Multichannel Behavior
• Mac Startup Key Combinations
• Turn on Performance Mode for macOS Server
• Adjust SMB Browsing Behavior in macOS
• Turn off packet signing for SMB 2 and SMB 3 connections
• If you can't mount SMB share hosted by a Mac bound to Open Directory
• Named Streams

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PowerScale OneFS: macOS Client Performance

and User Experience Optimization

2 PowerScale OneFS: macOS Client Performance and User Experience Optimization

Recommended Settings for PowerScale and macOS .................................................................. 6

Network storage protocols and macOS ........................................................................................ 7

Using Apple internal 10GBASE-T NICs with PowerScale OneFS ............................................... 8

Disabling Apple SMB extensions in OneFS.................................................................................. 9

Setting boot arguments in macOS .............................................................................................. 10

Preventing .DS_Store files on network shares........................................................................... 13

Delayed acknowledgments in macOS ......................................................................................... 14

Edits to /etc/nsmb.conf ................................................................................................................. 15

Spotlight search of network shares ............................................................................................ 18

Flow control and macOS .............................................................................................................. 20

macOS network storage performance issues ............................................................................ 21

Examining SMB mounts with smbutil ......................................................................................... 24

PowerScale OneFS: macOS Client Performance and User Experience Optimization 3

Historically, many optimizations were necessary on macOS to achieve maximum

4 PowerScale OneFS: macOS Client Performance and User Experience Optimization

Revisions Date Description

February 2019 Initial release

March 2019 Minor updates

April 2019 Updates on .DS_Store and flow control

December 2022 Updated for macOS 11.7 and 12.6

Author: Gregory Shiff

Contributors: Simon Haywood, Rafal Szczesniak

Special Thanks: Thomas Berglund

PowerScale OneFS: macOS Client Performance and User Experience Optimization 5

Recommended Settings for PowerScale and macOS

On the • Disabling Apple SMB extensions

6 PowerScale OneFS: macOS Client Performance and User Experience Optimization

Network storage protocols and macOS

• Alternate data streams (named streams) support

PowerScale OneFS: macOS Client Performance and User Experience Optimization 7

Multiple Ethernet connections to the storage only resulted in a small increase of

The above Apple KB article on SMB multichannel behavior includes several

Using Apple internal 10GBASE-T NICs with PowerScale OneFS

8 PowerScale OneFS: macOS Client Performance and User Experience Optimization

Updating Updating the PowerScale cluster setting of net.inet.tcp.reass.maxqueulen to 2048

Increasing net.inet.tcp.reass.maxqueulen can make the PowerScale cluster

To view the current setting of net.inet.tcp.reass.maxqueuelen, run the following

Temporarily change the value on a particular PowerScale node:

Push the change to all nodes in the cluster:

Disabling Apple SMB extensions in OneFS

OsxCopyFile: With the SMB2 protocol, Microsoft implemented server-side optimizations

PowerScale OneFS: macOS Client Performance and User Experience Optimization 9

Setting boot arguments in macOS

To view boot-args, run the following terminal command:

10 PowerScale OneFS: macOS Client Performance and User Experience Optimization

(262,144 * 2) / 1,024 = 512 MB

To remove boot-args settings, run the following terminal command:

PowerScale OneFS: macOS Client Performance and User Experience Optimization 11

nvram boot-args=”serverperfmode=1 ncl=262144”

To remove all boot-args simultaneously:

To enable ServerPerfMode and keep existing boot-args:

nvram boot-args="serverperfmode=1 $(nvram boot-args 2>/dev/null |

To disable ServerPerfMode and keep existing boot-args:

nvram boot-args="$(nvram boot-args 2>/dev/null | sed -e \

To update the ncl setting and keep existing boot-args:

nvram boot-args="ncl=262144 $(nvram boot-args 2>/dev/null | cut -f

To remove the ncl setting and keep existing boot args:

nvram boot-args="$(nvram boot-args 2>/dev/null | sed -e \

nvram boot-args="serverperfmode=1 ncl=262144 $(nvram boot-args

12 PowerScale OneFS: macOS Client Performance and User Experience Optimization