Feature Comparison for Mac Clients AFP (HELIOS) AFP (Apple) SMB1 (Windows Server) SMB2 (Windows Server) SMB2 (OS X 10.9 Server and newer) NFS
Separate server process per client  
  • Parallel processes run more efficiently
  • A single client process failure cannot affect other users
  • Each process runs with user's permissions (not as “root”), enforces file security/process safety
  • The HELIOS Service Controller monitors all services
 √ – – – – –
Spotlight search support  
  • Quickly finds server files, based upon file name, metadata, or text content
  • HELIOS indexes files and supports Spotlight for Mac, Windows, and web clients
 √ √ – – √ –
Time Machine backup support  
  • AFP supports network client backups to AFP server volumes
  • HELIOS EtherShare adds Mac tools to create and manage backup images
√ √ – – – –
Volume reconnect support  
  • Super convenient for users – no dropped volumes/errors
  • Essential for silent server fail-over support
  • AFP has sleep/wakeup protocol support which means volumes are always connected
 √ √ – – – √
Mac Alias support  
  • You can rename files and folders, and the Alias links to them will still work
  • Applications use Aliases to link to external content (e.g. videos/images). Alias support means these links don't break if you rename files & folders on the server
  • The HELIOS AFP desktop database supports unique file IDs which are used for Aliases
 √ √ – – √ –
Server copy file  
  • A client initiated file copy on a server volume is actually done locally on the server
  • No traffic between the server and client
  • A local server file copy works many times faster
√ √ – – – –
Apple Extended Attributes support  
  • Needed for Mac file comments, Finder Tags, etc.
  • HELIOS enables cross-platform support for file comments and other extended attributes
  • Using NFS with Macs, clients save extended attributes for each file in an extra AppleDouble file. Windows users will see this and if they rename a file they must also rename the corresponding “._” file
 √ √ √ √ √ via “._AppleDouble” file
Easy remote server administration app  
  • Apple GUI server administration application works only from OS X clients
  • Windows and other SMB servers cannot be administrated from Mac clients
  • HELIOS GUI server administration application works from Mac, Windows and UNIX clients
 Mac, Win Mac Win Win Mac –
Server-based “fast find file” support  
  • Modern server solutions should complete searches for files in a few seconds due to indexed server searches
  • Server solutions or network protocols without “fast find file” support may take a very long time to find files. E.g. Windows 2003 with 120,000 files needs about 7 minutes
  • Without fast find file support a single client search must traverse the server volume directory tree, adding load to the disk, CPU and network. A search can take hours (depending on the amount of files)
 √ √ – – √ –
UNIX and ACL file permission support  
  • Depends upon underlying file system, some file systems support UNIX permissions, others add ACL support. ACL may be different depending on the file system
 √ √ – – – √ (UNIX only)
Remote users can change passwords  
  • Otherwise, a network administrator must do so
 √ √ – – – –
Cross-platform file and record locking  
  • Only Apple and HELIOS support this
  • Via AFP for Mac clients, via SMB for Windows clients
  • Avoids potential data loss, allows shared/concurrent use of documents
 √ √ – – – –
Hide volumes for users/groups  
  • Important for security and user convenience
  • Each volume can have users and groups membership to hide the volume for other users
 √ – – – – –
Server and printer browsing via Bonjour  
  • AFP servers can be quickly browsed via Bonjour
  • Only HELIOS and Apple servers from OS X 10.9 on support Bonjour over SMB
 √ √ – – √ (OS X 10.9 an newer) –
Max read transactions size  
  • Larger transaction size enables faster throughput
  • AFP offers significantly faster read/write performance than SMB or NFS. The performance depends on the read and write sizes used by each client application
 1 MB (8 x 128 kB) 1 MB (8 x 128 kB) 60 kB 4 MB (4 x 1 MB) 4 MB (4 x 1 MB) 0.5 MB (16 x 32 kB)
Max write transactions size  
  • Larger transaction size enables faster throughput
  • AFP offers significantly faster read/write performance than SMB or NFS. The performance depends on the read and write sizes used by each client application
 1 MB (8 x 128 kB) 1 MB (8 x 128 kB) 60 kB 0.5 MB (1 x 512 kB) 0.5 MB (1 x 512 kB) 0.128 MB (4 x 32 kB)