NAS problem II - network issue?

[TechLady]

Small office of two or three computers, all sharing CAD files off the NAS gets this message occasionally:

This is from the NEW Synology NAS I just installed for them (yes, I named it "NASty," lol).

Possibly related...here's what the old NAS was doing:

This is causing them, and me, to tear our hair out. Google is not really of much help--of the dozens of pages I looked at, everybody seems to be fumbling blindly with this one.

I fronted $300 on the new NAS system thinking that would solve this sort of problem (since the one they had was so old and cranky) and it hasn't. No one else is accessing the files when this comes up. Rebooting does seem to solve the problem temporarily.

There seems to be a common theme with both these errors, and my instinct says this is a network issue with DNS or DHCP but I don't really know. It seems to happen at random. Ideas?

 

[HCHTech]

So $300 must mean that you re-used the drives from the old NAS, yes? That could point to one of the drives, I suppose.

What is the networking infrastructure like? Are all workstations wired? How good (and how old) is the switch? Cabling ok? Patch cables ok?

You might kill and recreate the mapped drive on each workstation, could be something flaky with cached credentials.

Autocad makes a local copy of the dwg file (which can be huge) and supporting files whenever you open one on a workstation, so that is a LOT of traffic over the wire. Also, it allows multiple people to work on the same file and somehow automagically syncs the changes around the network as they are made. We have a larger architectural firm, and we had to go to 10Gb NICs on the server and a new switch with a couple of 10Gb connections to solve speed issues workers were having. I don't think that option is available on any NAS I've seen...yet..

Also most NAS-targeted drives like WD Reds are 5400 rpm, so not speed demons to start with. It's possible the NAS is being overloaded and that screws up the 'accept new connections' bit.

I might start by measuring throughput to each workstation - go in on a Saturday when no one is trying to work and pull a 50GB file from the NAS to each workstation in turn and measure the time it takes to look for outliers.

 

[Moltuae]

How are you mapping the NAS to the PCs?

The only reliable way is to use a login script, preferably using the NAS' IP address, especially in workgroup environments.

This is my usual login script:

@echo off

SET ROUTER=10.10.10.254

:: Wait for the LAN connection to be established
:checknet
Ping %ROUTER% -n 1 -w 1000 >nul
if errorlevel 1 (
    goto :checknet
)

:: Delete exisiting network connections
net use n: /delete

:: Map network drives
net use n: "\\10.10.10.241\share" /user:username password /persistent:no

The script waits for a network connection to be established before unmapping then re-mapping the connection(s). Windows typically does not wait for the network before attempting to re-map 'persistent' drive-maps (resulting in the old "Could not reconnect all network drives" message at login). The mapping is intentionally 'non-persistent' so that the script has full control over the re-mapping.

Replace 10.10.10.254 with the router's IP address, or any always-on device that can be relied upon to determine if a network connection has been established. Replace 10.10.10.241 with the NAS' IP address (or network name if necessary) and of course replace the username and password with the correct credentials. It may be necessary/better to use the 'full' username in some cases (eg: NASname\Username).

I would put the script in a folder (eg c:\scripts) and create a shortcut to it in the Startup folder, with the shortcut properties set to 'run minimised' (just so that it doesn't pop up at login, especially since the net use /delete command will usually produce an error, which may concern the users). As an alternative to using the Startup folder, you could create a login schedule to run the script if you prefer.

Be sure to run 'net use' to manually check for (and delete) any existing connections to the NAS before implementing the script.

 

[seedubya]

Firstly, you have two different and probably unrelated problems.

The first issue seems like mapping is the issue. Use @Moltuae 's solution to eliminate this. If it does not then I'd say you have a physical connectivity issue where the drive letter is dropping and re-connecting. It could also be related to there being multiple mappings to same folder tree.

The second issue is almost certainly Autocad related rather then network related. I've seen this several times but only on peer-to-peer LANs and I've never found a proper solution. Perhaps someone else may be able to shed some light. One cause I have been able to fix is where there are permissions issues on the folder being saved to or where it's marked read-only.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

I'll also recommend the "disconnect" command..we always used this in the old days of login batch files..and for workgroups.
Here's a sample of one

if "%COMPUTERNAME%"=="TERMINAL" \\<clientsdomainremoved>.local\NETLOGON\tslogon.bat
net use s: /d >nul
net use w: /d >nul
net use S: \\host-15\suncoast
net use W: \\host-17\w-wpdocs


OR...you can stagger their order..doesn't matter...like this one...

if "%COMPUTERNAME%"=="TERMINAL" \\<clientsdomianremoved>.local\NETLOGON\tslogon.bat
net use s: /d >nul
net use S: \\host-15\suncoast
net use w: /d >nul
net use W: \\host-17\w-wpdocs
net use o: /d >nul
net use O: \\host-17\Administrative
net use h: /d >nul
net use h: \\host-17\hr
net use v: /d >nul
Echo y | del %homepath%\AppData\Local\IsolatedStorage\*
Echo y | del %homepath%\AppData\Local\Solutions\*

 

[TechLady]

So $300 must mean that you re-used the drives from the old NAS, yes?

Nope, brand new WD Red drives. @Moltuae, great suggestion, thank you! I'll try that.