NAS and shared CIFS/NFS

[lahtinenk]

Hello,

We have been searching for a NAS gateway solution (we have EMC SAN) and your product is one possibility. We were quite suprised when we heard that we could not share an area between Windows and Linux users. We do not quite understand why there is such a limitation as we currently have similar configuration using Samba.

Anyway this is a "must" as we need to share users home directories with both CIFS and NFS. I would prefer if the security would be in sync, so the NFS share should understand ACL's also.

[Kimberley]

Hi @lahtinenk,

Her'e's some info from the product team about this:

Storage Foundation Scalable File Server (SFS) currently works very similar to how Samba does. Directories can be accessed by either CIFS or NFS but not both without risk of corruption. For the safety of our customers' data, we intentionally disable the shared access of CIFS and NFS. We can enable shared access but users will have to be aware of the risk of corruption if simultaneous changes from NFS and CIFS clients are made to a file. By the way, we are working on upgrading our support for shared CIFS/NFS access. Stay tuned…

Hope this is useful to you as you work out your solution.
Best,

[lahtinenk]

Hello Kimberly,

Thank you very much for a clear answer to my question. May I ask a little additional clarification:

- If we buy the current version can we decide to "live dangerously" and turn off the protection feature?

- I understand that the next version is scheduled for later this year, but I wonder if it would mean complete reinstallation or is it only an update?

- Do you have a roadmap or other information about the future versions?

Best regards,

Kimmo

[Kimberley]

Hi Kimmo,

My pleasure. These are all good questions. Here's some additional information from the product team:

Q: If we buy the current version can we decide to "live dangerously" and turn off the protection feature?
A: Yes

Q: I understand that the next version is scheduled for later this year, but I wonder if it would mean complete reinstallation or is it only an update?
A: Version 5.5 will be a simple update.

Q: Do you have a roadmap or other information about the future versions?
A: We’d be happy to have a roadmap conversation with you, but we don't publish roadmaps on public sites. I will send you a private message with a product team contact so you can discuss this in greater detail.

Best,

[Bala_Kumaresan]

SFS is built on top of SFCFS 5.0mp1(alomst 95% of SFS is SFCFS) and 5.1 SFCFS will fully support clustered NFS on Linux, Solaris(sparc and x86) and AIX platforms.

The SFS form factor is more attractive for environments which doesn't require configuration flexibility and SFCFS based CNFS/DCIFS allows more flexibility in terms of file system configuration, software configuration including platform choice.

Essentially customers have a choice of two solutions depending on which form factor better meets their requirement.

regards, Bala.

 

[lahtinenk]

Hello,

I have waited some time for you to get the new version ready, but I wonder what it happening? Our original problem is still open and I wonder when you solution would be available for testing?

Best regards,

Kimmo