Is it possible to have same FQDN for CIFS share at two locations with CDOT?

[#1]

First of, I'm a newbie to CDOT. I have been trained in 7-mode systems, but am needing to plan a CDOT setup.

We will be getting a new FAS2650 (HA) running ONTAP 9.1 and upgrade our existing FAS 2240 (HA) to ONTAP 9.1 as well.

Requirements are simple.

FASSF (in San Fransisco)

FASLA (in Los Angeles)

We will have a 100 Mbps VPN between the two.

I need to have a single UNC share (because of our document management system hard-codes these in a SQL database) for all data, say: \\cifsdata.domain.local\data\

For users in SF, their desktops will take them to the share on FASSF. 

For users in LA, their desktops will take them to the share on FASLA.

But, they are both accessing from their machines (and mounting to a drive letter in Windows via SMB v2.1) to \\cifsdata.domain.local\data\.

The data will be synced between sites with a product call PeerLink (on 15-minute intervals). We are using this because we need bi-directional file locking (when opened) as well.

Is this possible? If so, can you tell me how the configuration would go?

- Elan

[#2]

Elan -

You can't have two identical machine accounts in AD for the vservers.

I'd use two different CNAMEs in the two sites to pint to the two different SVMs.

I hope this response has been helpful to you.

At your service,

Eugene E. Kashpureff, Sr.
Independent NetApp Consultant http://www.linkedin.com/in/eugenekashpureff
Senior NetApp Instructor, FastLane US http://www.fastlaneus.com/
(P.S. I appreciate 'kudos' on any helpful posts.)

[#3]

Hi Eugene,

Yes, I am aware of that part.

I know I can create NetBios alias and CNAMEs to devices as well.

I suspect AD/Windows DFS can be used for this (with the replication component not enabled).

- Elan

[#4]

Hi.
Actually it's possible but you need to use additional technologies not related to CDOT.

For example use bgp in every location. Network switches will anonce local IP to local clients.

But if you aren't familiar to this, don't try. You can break your local networks.

[#5]

Hi

Few options if that indeed a requirement to have unified path:

1. As you said -  DFS. we have DFS fronting the File servers with just referrals. no replication. It’s working. We also use it for our DR failover (based on snapmirror). It works OK the only problem start with our helpdesk not being able to troubleshoot it (they can’t “just ping”) and we had some nightmares with getting branches and subsidiaries to use it (mainly political around firewall and exposure).
   
2. BranchCache – I don’t like it. But it works.
   
3. Symbol links on a dedicated “root share”. You can create a single share used by everyone on one or both the clusters - from that share you can create symlink either locally or to the remote cluster. * In one of the places I worked before we has different DNS subdomain to each site. It allowed us to create the same record name on each site and refer to different targets (so \\fileserver on one site referred to one server and on another site to completely other and the client picked it as it was registered in the same subdomain and first in the FQDN search. It was good fun and allowed something similar to what you asking here without the need to travel around the network

Now that was all to meet that requirement. Is it a real requirement – you only know.

I’m an old fashioned. I prefer single CNAME to single purpose and that’s it.   No extra point of failures and management. Easy for helpdesk/network/partners to understand and troubleshoot.