CIFS Server and Filer With Different Names

[TMADOCTHOMAS]

Has anyone tried joining a NetApp filer to a domain and using a different name for the CIFS Server?  I'm trying to determine what (if any) are the ramifications of doing that.

The application is this: for our remote offices, we typically stand up a vFiler with a certain naming convention and join it to our primary domain, and then we also join the filer to the primary domain for administrative purposes.  Our standard going forward will be to do away with the vFiler and just share out CIFS from the root of the filer.  I would like to continue to use our administrative naming convention for the filers themselves, but use our old vFiler naming convention for the CIFS Server when joining the filer to the domain.

[JGPSHNTAP]

Ok, i need to address this.. Why on earth would you be going away with vfiler?   There has to be a lot of convincing on my part to part ways with vfiler

You can join the domain as any workstation name if you want.. But again, it's annoying to manage and have no idea why you would do that.

We are talking 7-mode here

[TMADOCTHOMAS]

We are doing away with the vFiler configuration because we are switching from 2220's for our remote offices to Data OnTAP EDGE.  EDGE does not support vFilers.  Yes, this is 7-mode.

Regarding having a separate name being 'annoying to manage' - how so?  That's what I'm wanting to determine - what are the 'gotchas' that we might encounter?  I'm trying to determine whether or not to move forward with this or not.

[JGPSHNTAP]

Ugg, ontap edge.. anyways...

I don't know how you lost that battle b/c vfiler-dr is worth more to a business DR strategy than the reduced cost of ontap edge.  This is just my opinion, There's a difference between price and cost, and your management is making the wrong decision.

As for managing different name spaces, it's hard to manage different name spaces, how are you going to correlate what filer is joined as what.

Please take this as constructive criticism.

[TMADOCTHOMAS]

Thanks!  So, I would simply have a DNS entry created for the management name of the filer (i.e. FASxxxx-<location>), and a matching HOSTS entry on the filer itself.  When I joined it to the domain I would join it using the vFiler naming convention so users would see a familiar naming convention.  I may simply use the vFiler naming convention for the whole filer rather than having two names, but I just wanted to fully investigate this other option to see if it would be fairly simple to administer.