Xsan: Editing mount options to increase performance

Editing plist files used by Xsan to customize mount options may help increase performance in some scenarios if you are using Mac OS X Server 10.3.5 or later, and Xsan 1.1 or later. To do this, follow these steps.

1. Using Xsan Admin, unmount the volume on the client (doing so will ensure that the client's automount plist file is in the new format).
2. At the client, use Terminal to copy the automount.plist file to a working directory, such as your desktop:
   

   % cp /Library/Filesystems/Xsan/config/automount.plist ~/Desktop/

   
   
3. If you haven't already installed the Xcode Tools package from your Software Installation disc, do so now (the next steps require using the Property List Editor utility that Xcode installs at /Developer/Applications/Utilities).
4. Open the automount.plist file in Property List Editor.
5. Expand the plist as shown.
   
   
   
   
6. Select the MountOptions node, then click the New Child button.
7. A new item appears. Replace the text "New item" with "dircachesize." Make sure that the Class column shows "String." In the Value column, type "256m." This will set the directory cache size on the client to 256 MB (depending on the amount of memory installed in the client and the expected workload, a different value may be appropriate).
   
   
   
   
8. Repeat steps 5 to 7 for each volume that you want to change.
9. From the File menu, choose Save.
10. Quit Property List Editor.
11. In Terminal, copy the updated automount.plist file back to the Xsan configuration directory on the client:
    

    % sudo cp ~/Desktop/automount.plist /Library/Filesystems/Xsan/config/

    
    
12. Mount the volume on the client using Xsan Admin.

The volume should now mount with the new mount options specified in automount.plist.