On 10/1/2012 3:28 PM, Dyer, Rodney wrote: > NetApp’s strength is actually its problem, and that is it doesn’t > actually exist to the client, it is completely invisible. Windows sees > it as a normal Windows CIFS share. ‘nix sees it as NFS. The problem is > that this is point-to-point file sharing. AFS allows global namespace, > and the client does the volume lookup to find the server for the “path” > required. This is true “distribution”, not point-to-point. > > If you setup Microsoft’s AD “dfs” with NetApp filers, you might come > close to “emulating” what AFS does, but it won’t be pretty, and as far > as I know ‘nix is out of the question in that setup.
At the SNIA 2012 Storage Developers Conference Linux SMB 2.1 support was demonstrated. This support is in kernel and provides Linux the same level of SMB protocol support as Windows 7. I don't know if the SMB module is capable of per user GSS-API authentication but if it is, SMB can be used as an alternative to NFS when communicating with a NetApp server. NetApp filers are still extremely expensive storage devices. Microsoft Windows Storage Server 2012 can be used to provide a much less expensive storage solution providing cluster failover for database and hypervisor applications. Of course, many large enterprises already own NetApp filers and feel obligated to use them for as many services as possible in order to justify the cost. Jeffrey Altman
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