AE Pilot and AFP

[Kristian]

We currently have a Windows file server and are looking at adding ExtremeZ-IP to give us AFP support. However, we are also in the near future looking at installing Esko Automation Engine Server (which doesn't support AFP.

My question is.... If the Mac users already have the AFP file server mounted on their desktops and open a file through AE Pilot will it use the existing AFP mount or remount a SMB share?

Obviously if it forces SMB then it defeats the object of us going ahead with ExtremeZ-IP.

Thanks for any help.

Kristian

 

[chevalier]

Apparently had bad info. I was told by Esko it wouldn't work and even tried anyway but failed. Going to reinvestigate.

 

[WI-Flexo]

Actually not really true. It can be done Kristian. We currently mount our files shares through AFP and AE does NOT try to mount another SMB connection. AFP actually works just fine with AE and you get the added benefit of custom icons and such on the mac which you can't do with SMB. Here is a screenshot of my script that mounts my shares. Notice the ONLY SMB mounts are the ones directly from the RIP/AE. All others are AFP. If you need any more info let me know and I will see if I can help.

 

[StillWaiting]

We are currently using AFP via Mac OS X Server 10.6.8 w/ no problems in AE 12.2
Using AFP allows us to not get the Illustrator "locked file" problem when using SMB.
If we use SMB we have to work on files locally and then copied them over to the file server when done.

And Apple is switching away from AFP. I think they already have in 10.9. So at some time it will be SMB only. Just like they got ride of AppleTalk.

 

[WI-Flexo]

-chevalier
We were also told by Esko for years that AE absolutely would NOT work AFP and so we used SMB. It wasn't until we had to rebuild our AE server that we decided to give it a really good try and were able to get it to work.

-Stillwaiting
We are running 10.9.4 on new mac pros and are still using AFP. You are correct they will be going away from it in the future but their new SMB2 has MANY issues so I imagine AFP will be around until they get the bugs worked out of SMB2. A lot of people running 10.9 are forcing SMB1 connections because of all the problems with SMB2.

 

[chevalier]

-chevalier
We were also told by Esko for years that AE absolutely would NOT work AFP and so we used SMB. It wasn't until we had to rebuild our AE server that we decided to give it a really good try and were able to get it to work.

-Stillwaiting
We are running 10.9.4 on new mac pros and are still using AFP. You are correct they will be going away from it in the future but their new SMB2 has MANY issues so I imagine AFP will be around until they get the bugs worked out of SMB2. A lot of people running 10.9 are forcing SMB1 connections because of all the problems with SMB2.

Yep, we have a number of legacy servers here we connect to via SMB1 (CIFS protocol) with our 10.9 macs. I used to support MacServerIP in three locations (basically the same thing as ExtremeZ-IP). Apple has basically stopped making servers now and it is a real mess migrating Appletalk or AFP shares to SMB. Filename lengths and file extensions were (possible still are) a major problem when you have to migrate. Permissions can be a whole other bag of nightmares.

Some notes of interest:
SMB2 is already on it's way out as Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 support SMB3
Apple is using their own flavor of SMB which they call SMBX (basically SMB2 with some AFP features glued on).

 

[Kristian]

Thanks all. Glad to know it works successfully. We have 2 Mac already running 10.9 and thought that SMB2 would solve any issues. It doesn't. I know will eventually drop AFP but I think it'll be around for a while yet.