Throttle Shared Users With OS X — Is It Possible?

whisper_jeff writes "I work in a design studio where the production director is also the owner's son (translation = he can do no wrong). He is fond of accessing a designer's computer via filesharing and working directly on files off of the designer's computers rather than transferring the files to his computer to work on them there. In so doing, he causes the designer's computer to grind to a near-halt as the harddrive is now tasked with his open/save requests along with whatever the designer is doing. Given that there is no way he's going to change his ways (since he doesn't see anything wrong with it...), I was wondering if there was a way to throttle a user's shared access to a computer (Mac OSX 10.5.8) so that his remote working would have minimal impact on our work. Google searches have revealed nothing helpful (maybe I should Bing it... :) so I was hoping someone with more technical expertise on Slashdot could offer a suggestion."

Comments

the correct solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Disable file shares on workstations. Use a file server.

Re:the correct solution

[Captain Splendid]

Disable file shares on workstations. Use a file server.

Well, that's the correct technical solution, but the real, supreme, correct decision is: Find a new job, and fast. Nothing good has ever come from challenging a coworker who enjoys immunity, especially when it's familial.

Re:the correct solution

[TheKidWho]

Yes, but you keep it organized at a single location, not fractured over 10 different computers.

Re:the correct solution

[nine-times]

Having been in similar situations, I more or less agree.

There's no way around it: If the owner is really letting his son do whatever he wants, then any successful technical solution is likely to cause you real-world trouble. You may allow your designers to work better, but if the son goes complaining behind your back to the owner, you'll find yourself suffering more.

The real questions for this situation are (a) Is there any chance the owner is intelligent and reasonable enough for you to discuss the situation? and (b) If not, is your job otherwise good enough to tolerate a boss who's unprofessional enough to allow this sort of thing?

Re:the correct solution

[amicusNYCL]

Right, multiple folders all over your harddrive are way easier to manage and find then making a bunch of subdirectories under My Documents.

Re:the correct solution

[Lunch2000]

I should add to my previous post, the other solution is to put an SSD on the designers computer.

Which is dumb because you just move the bottleneck to the system bus or network card

Re:the correct solution

[Anonymous Coward]

If you move it to a file server and disable sharing he won't have a choice...he won't do things the right way by choice but given no alternative he will adapt. Call it a security patch, or a data integrity enhancements, or a productivity improvement for collaborative work and sell the concept to the boss as something totally different than a problem with his kid. Once sold disable the shares, move to a file server, and boom he doesn't have a choice but to adapt.

Nepotism is destructive and a problem. It is also unfightable so why try? You don't have to convince them to do they right thing through rational argument and education you just have to do the right thing and have the understand it is the right thing. If they understood all the details they wouldn't need you.

Re:the correct solution

[jimicus]

Which is why you don't pitch a file-server as being "to prevent the bosses' son can quit screwing my computer up".

You pitch it as "a more efficient way for us all to work, a lot easier to maintain in terms of backups..."

Re:the correct solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because an IT Admin that can't find the problem in the technology is TOTALLY demonstrating why he continues to be worth his salary.

NEVER PLAY DUMB. EVER. Unless you want your boss to think you are dumb.

Let me repeat: NEVER PLAY DUMB. Especially in an area that within which it is your responsibility to be knowledgeable.

DO be proactive and professional. Do your cost benefit analysis and present it. A file server has enough advantages here that it will easily be worth the money. If cost/benefit doesn't justify it and it's instead a personal gripe, get over it and move on.

Boss is a tightwad that won't spend the cash when it's of obvious benefit (and will make him more in the long run?) You need a new boss who has a more business-like mind. Until then, you can count on not seeing further raises once he feels like you get "enough".

Re:the correct solution

[Nimey]

Lips and arseholes are technically meat.

Re:the correct solution

[nine-times]

Yeah, well... that's why I asked the question. However, if the boss isn't around too often and his son is somewhat manageable and the economy is falling apart and you have an otherwise good, high-paying job, you might not want to quit immediately.

If the boss isn't intelligent enough I wouldn't expect him or her to remain in business long

Meh. You really buy into the idea that success is determined by ability and virtue, or what? Like bad businesses never make money? If a company manages to stay afloat, it means the owner was smart and mature and professional?

Doesn't really work that way. You just need to be entrenched, be less incompetent than your direct competition, or have better connections than your competition. Sometimes it's better sales and marketing, worse product. Sometimes your boss is good at some things that really matter, but still an unprofessional irrational bastard. And sometimes your boss isn't so bad when you add it all up, but he's still not emotionally detached enough to stay rational when he thinks his son is being insulted.

A suggestion...

[Earl The Squirrel]

Put a 10 MBit switch between his computer and the network... that'll do it... 8-)

Re:A suggestion...

[MightyMartian]

Any throttling is going to be noticed by this idiot, and if his old man is shit stupid to let him do this kind of thing anyways, you can be sure you'll be getting an unfriendly knock on the door about the slow network.

Disable file sharing on the workstations, go to a file server, tell the other guys to copy their own files over to do their work and let fuck brain fuck with the stuff on the file server. If you need a rationale, just say "We need to centralize our file store for better security and backups."

Explain

[amicusNYCL]

Is it not possible to explain to this person the negative impact that his actions have? You explained it to us with one sentence:

In so doing, he causes the designer's computer to grind to a near-halt as the harddrive is now tasked with his open/save requests along with whatever the designer is doing.

Right after that line you say he doesn't see anything wrong with it. Have you not explained this to him?

And why are you sharing every workstation instead of using a single file server?

Re:Explain

[IANAAC]

Designers are notorious for being retarded.

I wouldn't call them retarded, just focused elsewhere. Hell, the same could be said about pretty much any non-IT worker or home user using any operating system.

Unless it's their job to know better, most people won't.

Re:Explain

[QuantumRiff]

Or, you use a fiberchannel card, or iSCSI over your gigabit nic, and connect directly to your SAN...

Wait, What?

[moosesocks]

Somehow, I find it surprising that you're managing to saturate a modern hard drive via a single network connection. Are you running extremely slow PCs on a ridiculously fast network? The workflow that you describe sounds pretty normal for a design studio.

Re:Wait, What?

[Big Boss]

Most current Macs, even a few versions back, are quite quick machines dragging an anchor around in the form of a 5400RPM laptop hard drive. With multi-user access, seek times add up fast. Upgrading my Mac Mini to a mid-level SSD made it feel 10x faster. Now it's the stupid SATA1 interface slowing things down. Not much I can do about that.

Upgrading the machine to a "modern hard drive" would help a lot. Even in laptop form factor, 7200RPM is easy to come by. SSD is ideal, but design places tend to use big files, so an SSD might be too small.

Or, as suggested by every other reply, put up a real file server. A few mirrors stripped into a single big drive should give excellent performance.

Re:Wait, What?

[moosesocks]

I put a 7200 RPM hard drive in my mini, and definitely appreciated the speed boost, so I can definitely see where you're coming from. (And unlike the SSD, I ended up increasing my internal storage capacity, and didn't go broke in the process)

Of course, my own personal pet peeve with the Mini is its absurdly maximum memory capacity -- 2gb on early Intel models, 4gb on more recent models. This is barely acceptable for a laptop, let alone a (tiny) desktop.

Re:file server?

[anlprb]

You missed the part where he said "design studio" and "OS X." Also, since he is posting to /. for the answer, the idea of knowing what he _should_ be doing in an IT role is a stretch. I don't know why any office with more than 1 computer wouldn't have a file server, but hey, don't even ask him when his last off-site backup was, he may cry.

Be assertive

[QuoteMstr]

This twit isn't your problem. Throttling him on your own initiative is both passive-aggressive and might overstep what the owner expects, which could land you in hot water. Don't do that. Here's what you do instead. Go to the owner's office and say the following:

I've been receiving complaints from some of the design staff about their computers slowing down and interfering with their work. The cause of the problem is the Production Director accessing files on designers' computers instead of copying them to his own. The hard drives on designer computers are not designed to accommodate two users accessing the files at once.

These slowdowns will persist unless we take action to correct the problem. If these remote accesses continue, we will need to increase the capacity of each designer's workstation at a cost of $A per machine for a total of $B. Another option would be to limit these remote accesses by implementing an automatic throttling system. That will take C hours of my time [optionally: at cost $D]." The last, which I recommend, is to create a new workflow for the Production Manager that ensures that designer computers are not overloaded.

What is your decision?

Re:Be assertive

[natehoy]

I like it. A lot. One small refinement. If you were worried about familial doucebaggery, you might even remove the specific job title of the person doing it, and fill out the explanation a tad.

"The cause of the problem is the Production Director accessing files on designers' computers instead of copying them to his own. The hard drives on designer computers are not designed to accommodate two users accessing the files at once."

becomes

"This problem occurs when two people need data at the same time on a specific designer workstation. One user is working at the workstation, and another will need to change a file that is located there, so the second user makes the changes remotely. The workstations simply aren't set up to handle that kind of usage, and it slows the workstation down considerably. We could upgrade the workstations at a cost of $X per station. We could also add a central file server where we can all share common project work, but that will cost $X. There is also a free way to reduce the impact of this - simply asking everyone to make local copies of everything they are working on."

Then you haven't blamed the kid for anything, merely pointed out that a practice that occurs within the office is having an impact, and that impact can be mitigated. No one, especially Dad, needs to know that Junior is the only one doing it, so you have given Junior a way to mend his ways without confrontation.

Re:Sounds like info is missing, but here goes

[jo_ham]

Why is it necessarily samba? If it's an all-Mac office, it could be AFP.

Re:Sounds like info is missing, but here goes

[Andy Dodd]

Unfortunately, when you're dealing with disk I/O, you can have processes that use little CPU but severely degrade disk performance by beating on the disk.

Even if it's at low priority, any seeks at all to a part of the drive that normally wouldn't be accessed will hurt performance.

It's not a case of "90% of the disk throughput for app A and 10% for B" - the moment you introduce B, the total performance drops significantly due to seeking coming into play.

wrong*2==right

[gandhi_2]

plant some weed in his desk and call the cops anon.

No-win situation

[orev]

If the user already enjoys immunity due to nepotism, what do you think the boss will do to you if he finds out you are specifically targeting his favorite employee? You can't win here, not matter what you do.

I like this

[Anonymous Coward]

Each designer can explain it away, saying "I noticed my computer was being slow, so rebooted it."

Re:file server?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because file servers cost money, and file servers, done right with redundancy for graphic design files cost lots of money. Most graphic design companies (all, by my experience, but I'm accept that another case may exist) have grown from one person, have no IT staff, and aren't willing to pay the price of another designer just to put files in one place no matter how much they know it's the right thing to do.

And about 50% have a decent backup plan with about half of that keeping data off-site, much higher than most other businesses of their size.

Re:Simple Fix

[ShadowRangerRIT]

Except you are responding to childish behavior by acting like a child yourself, not treating them like a child. When your child kicks you in the shin, you don't kick them back to demonstrate the error of their ways. Being an asshole and pretending you're not responsible is not a mature way of dealing with things. (I was about to write "...not an *adult* way of dealing with things," but as you've probably noticed, many adults are not mature)

Re:file server?

[anlprb]

You obviously have never heard of productivity. The more your people have it, the less it costs you to get work done, the faster you can get work out and the more you can bill. We work on T&M, we make sure our people can produce as much as possible to leave as much buffer room in to check work and then take on more. A worker waiting costs me more than any hardware it would take to fix the situation.

Centralizing using a NAS box as a file server wouldn't cost much more than your monthly budget for burnt coffee. Plan for success, work the plan, let the plan work for you and then succeed because of the plan. Sounds like you can't budget. This is a business we are talking about, not a home "design studio", right?

His solution would not cost more than a couple thousand at most. If the owner's son is still "doing work" then they are probably not big enough to be an medium business. This means their storage needs are pretty light, hence cheap.

Re:file server?

[martinX]

After a re-reading, I realised that the person asking the question doesn't describe themselves as a sys-admin. He said he "works in a design studio". So he might not have any real network responsibilities but might be looking to help a mate out.

Secondly, the ID10T causing the problems is the Production Director. He may be the boss's son, but in the company structure his position is over the top of just about everyone else. Technical issues should be taken to the Production Director first and foremost since it's part of his job to oversee productions.

Next: "He is fond of accessing a designer's computer via filesharing and working directly on files off of the designer's computers rather than transferring the files to his computer to work on them there."

So he isn't accessing the same files the designer is using at the same time, but accessing files for a project which he is allowed to do because he is the Production Director.

Why does the designer have all the files for a project that others working on the project (indeed others who actually direct the project) may need to use stored locally on his hard drive?

My advice is: don't take shortcuts. They'll only hurt you in the end. There is no such thing as a temporary fix, nor a permanent solution.

Talking to the boss

[Midnight Thunder]

I would wonder whether the designer has considered simply talking to the boss and explaining the impact in terms of dollars and hour?. If his boss does not try to correct his sons behaviour, then I would consider the throttling approach and then what other job opportunities there are. If this continual behaviour results in you wanting to leave the company, then you shouldn't really be worried about being getting fired for bringing the issue up with your boss.

Solving the real problem

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to say this, but this falls into the typical situation I see all the time in technology.

"You will never be able to solve a social problem with technology". Attempting to do so gives you a false sense of security in solving the real issue.

Aka: Solve technical problems technically, and social problems socially.

Change it in Launchd

[DigitalGodBoy]

This should help: sudo nano -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.AppleFileServer.plist Add in the following lines: LowPriorityIO This will cause the AFP server on the file share to have only spare access to the disk.