Network and Storage Protocols

dynamic home directories and DFS

naveens17
12,288 Views

Hi Folks,

 

 

 

in my current environment I am looking for using dynamic home drives functionality on CDOT.. by spreading the users home folders on different volumes spread across all the nodes..

 

with dynamic home drives my windows team is looking to use DF functionality as well...... can this be done..?

 

 

Thanks in advance..

11 REPLIES 11

Sahana
12,231 Views

Hi,

 

Please refer a similar discussion: http://community.netapp.com/t5/FAS-and-Data-ONTAP-Articles-and-Resources/Cheat-Sheet-Setting-up-a-Vserver-for-user-home-directories-in-a-Windows-File/...

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naveens17
12,180 Views

I got that.. by I am looking how this dynamic home directories assoicated with windows DFS functionality 

SeanHatfield
12,096 Views

Not sure what the end goal is.  You want the user home drive to be a DFS path, that maps them back to their dynamic homedir on the SVM?  Sure, since about 8.3.2GA.

 

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naveens17
12,089 Views

Yes user home drive to be a DFS path, that maps them back to their dynamic homedir on the SVM...

 

SeanHatfield
12,071 Views

In that case add a homedir share CIFS.HOMEDIR with a path %w then point your DFS leaf at \\yoursvm\CIFS.HOMEDIR

 

This mimics the homedir feature from 7mode. If you transition a homedir config over from 7mode, 7MTT sets this up for you.  When a user with a home directory on the SVM connects to that DFS path, they should land in their home directory.

 

 

 

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naveens17
12,018 Views

well when I was trying to create the share CIFS.HOMEDIR

 

cifs share create -share-name CIFS.HOMEDIR -path %w /// Below is the error message I am getting

 

Error: command failed: Failed to create CIFS share CIFS.HOMEDIR. Reason: Standard shares must define an absolute share path in the Vserver's namespace

SeanHatfield
12,000 Views

The key thing in the message is "standard shares".  Hit tab to prepopulate the -share-properties and append homedirectory to the property list.  Then you should see a prompt similar to this:

 

Cluster1::vserver cifs*> share create -share-name CIFS.HOMEDIR -path %w -share-properties oplocks,browsable,changenotify,show-previous-versions,homedirectory -vserver svm1demo 
Warning: The home directory share's name "CIFS.HOMEDIR" does not
         contain a substitution value (%u or %w) to uniquely identify
         a home directory share. If multiple users from the same
         client access their home directories at the same time,
         unprotected access to each other's files can occur. This
         might cause unexpected "access denied" errors on those
         files, and data corruption within those files.
         Note: multiple users from a single client is most likely in
         a Citrix or Windows Terminal Services environment.
Do you want to continue? {y|n}: 

Note the warning.  This scenario can occur if multiple users connect from the same OS instance, such as a terminal server.You may not want to turn this on in a citrix environment.

 

You'll also need to setup your search paths and qtrees or directoriees for the user home if you have not already done so.

 

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naveens17
11,973 Views

Thanks Sean,

 

then this method will impact us ...since we have subset of users always loggin through citrix.

dan_arteritano
11,041 Views

I just went throught this, I was migrating a multiple search path cifs.homedir from a 7-mode system to a cDOT SVM.

 

Windows DFS has a share for Home

 

I created a cifs.homedir on th e cDOT cluster using w% usng this command:

 

vserver cifs share create -share-name nashomedir -path %w -share-properties oplocks,browsable,changenotify,show-previous-versions,homedirectory

 

vserver cifs home-directory search-path add -vs svmf001 -path /SYS_home
vserver cifs home-directory search-path add -vs svmf001 -path /hm/users
vserver cifs home-directory search-path add -vs svmf001 -path /hm/admins

 

DFS could not add the target

 

I deleted and recreated cifs.homedir as a regualr non-homedirectory share

 

vserver cifs share create -share-name nashomedir -path /hm

 

The target was added toDFS, no problem.

 

Then I deleted and recreated cifs.homedir again as I did with the original command.

 

vserver cifs share create -share-name nashomedir -path %w -share-properties oplocks,browsable,changenotify,show-previous-versions,homedirectory

 

Then I could use the DFS share and it took me to my home folder

 

 

 

naveens17
8,579 Views

Hi Dan,

 

Thanks for your response.

 

Can I know the version of ONTAP your running.

 

and I also see your using the cifs share path as 'static' pointing to %w but doing that you will have impact in environment like citrix.

 

Warning: The home directory share's name "homedir" does not contain a substitution value (%u or %w) to uniquely identify a home directory share. If multiple users from
the same client access their home directories at the same time, unprotected access to each other's files can occur. This might cause unexpected "access denied"
errors on those files, and data corruption within those files.
Note: multiple users from a single client is most likely in a Citrix or Windows Terminal Services environment.

dan_arteritano
8,301 Views

Hello,

 

We were running ONTAP 9.0, IMHO this was a DFS issue not a NetApp issue.

 

In my post I created a regular share call nashomedir without %w so DFS would be able to access an actual share, either deleted nashomedir  and recreated it with the command below:

 

vserver cifs share create -share-name nashomedir -path %w -share-properties oplocks.browsable, changenotify, show-previous-versions, homedirectory

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