topic Re: ONTAP 9 CIFS/SMB Windows File Path/Name Character Limit in Network and Storage Protocols

ONTAP 9 CIFS/SMB Windows File Path/Name Character Limit

dunno1958 — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 14:03:57 GMT

What's the file path/name character limit on ONTAP 9 for Windows 8.x clients please?

Any reference docs available?

Cheers

Re: ONTAP 9 CIFS/SMB Windows File Path/Name Character Limit

mbeattie — Wed, 07 Feb 2018 23:01:39 GMT

Hi,

I don't believe there is an ONTAP limitation, rather see the "Maximimum path length limitation" of Microsoft client operating systems here

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa365247(v=vs.85).aspx

I'd recommend structuring your data on CIFS shares using a broad directory structure rather than a deep\nested directory sturcutre to avoid this issue on older microsoft operating systems.

/Matt

Re: ONTAP 9 CIFS/SMB Windows File Path/Name Character Limit

dunno1958 — Thu, 08 Feb 2018 08:57:31 GMT

Thanks for the reply Matt. I've been doing more digging and found a couple of article:

https://kb.netapp.com/app/answers/answer_view/a_id/1030813/loc/en_US

'...........the NetApp software can be negatively impacted if the file path name exceeds 255 characters on a Windows host operating system.'

And https://kb.netapp.com/app/answers/answer_view/a_id/1000976/loc/en_US

'On the storage system, the maximum length of a file name is 255 characters for NFS clients and CIFS clients that support PC's long file name format.'