Skip to main content

We've Moved!

Product Documentation has moved to docs.hitachivantara.com
Hitachi Vantara Knowledge

Configuring the CIFS protocol


With the CIFS protocol, users and applications can add, view, and delete objects and modify object metadata through familiar directory structures.

© 2015, 2019 Hitachi Vantara Corporation. All rights reserved.

CIFS protocol configuration


You use the CIFS panel to enable and configure the CIFS protocol for a namespace. To display this panel, on the left side of the Protocols panel, click CIFS.

The top of the CIFS panel shows the string to use to identify the namespace when mapping it to a network drive or adding it as a network place on a CIFS client.

The CIFS panel lets you:

Enable the CIFS protocol.

Specify whether the CIFS protocol requires user authentication for access to the namespace. HCP uses Active Directory to authenticate CIFS users. This authentication is possible only if the tenant is configured to support AD authentication.

NoteWebHelp.png

Note: If the HCP system does not support Active Directory and CIFS is enabled for the namespace, the namespace is exposed as a share in the Windows workgroup specified in the HCP system configuration. However, if the CIFS protocol is configured to require authentication, the namespace cannot be accessed through the workgroup.

Specify the client IP addresses that have access to the namespace through CIFS.

Change CIFS case sensitivity (see CIFS case sensitivity).

When you reconfigure the CIFS protocol while it’s already enabled, the changes you make don’t affect current CIFS mounts of the namespace. To force the changes to take effect, you can take either of these actions:

Disable and then reenable the protocol. This causes all CIFS clients to lose their connections to the namespace. When they reconnect, the changes will be in effect.

Direct all clients with current CIFS mounts to disconnect from the namespace and then to either reboot or wait five minutes for cached connections to be released before reconnecting.

For information about using the CIFS protocol for namespace access, see Using a Namespace.

© 2015, 2019 Hitachi Vantara Corporation. All rights reserved.

CIFS case sensitivity


The Windows operating system is case preserving but not case sensitive. The HCP CIFS implementation, by default, is both case preserving and case sensitive. One result of this discrepancy is that Windows applications that do not observe differences in case may not be able to access HCP objects by name.

For example, suppose a Windows application adds a file named File.txt to the namespace by using the CIFS protocol. CIFS preserves case, so the namespace then contains an object named File.txt. Now suppose the application tries to retrieve that object using the name file.txt. CIFS is case sensitive, so it passes the request to HCP with only the name file.txt. It doesn’t include any case variations on the name, such as File.TXT, FILE.txt, or File.txt. As a result, HCP cannot find the object.

If you have Windows applications that ignore case, you may want HCP to ignore case as well. You can change the CIFS protocol configuration in either of two ways to meet this need:

Make CIFS case forcing — With this behavior, CIFS changes names to all upper- or lowercase in the requests it passes to HCP. To Windows applications, then, HCP appears to be case-insensitive. An application that stores File.txt and then retrieves File.TXT will get the right object back.

The drawback to this method is that applications using other namespace access protocols must accommodate this behavior. For example, suppose CIFS changes names to all uppercase. If an application using the CIFS protocol stores an object named File.txt, applications using the case-sensitive HTTP, WebDAV, and NFS protocols need to retrieve the object as FILE.TXT.

Make CIFS case insensitive — With this behavior, CIFS preserves case as objects are stored in the namespace but passes through every case variation possible when applications make other requests for objects.

For example, suppose an application using the CIFS protocol requests an object named FILE.txt. CIFS passes the request through with the names File.txt, FILE.txt, fiLe.TXT, and so on. HCP then returns the first object it finds with a name that matches any of these.

The major drawback to this method is that performance is slowed by the need to check for matches to multiple case variations. A second drawback is that if the namespace contains multiple objects with names that vary only in case, HCP may return the wrong object.

If you make CIFS both case forcing and case insensitive, it is case forcing when storing objects and case insensitive on requests for existing objects.

For more information about CIFS case sensitivity, see Case Sensitivity versus Case Preservation in CIFS Server (Samba) at http://www.manualshark.org/manualshark/files/28/pdf_27202.pdf.

© 2015, 2019 Hitachi Vantara Corporation. All rights reserved.

Enabling CIFS access to a namespace


The CIFS panel has three sections for enabling and configuring the CIFS protocol.

Settings section

To enable the CIFS protocol, in the Settings section:

1.Select Enable CIFS.

2.To specify CIFS authentication requirements, select either Authenticated access only or Anonymous and authenticated access. For information about these options, see User authentication options.

3.Click Update Settings in the Settings section.

Allow/Deny section

Optionally, in the Allow/Deny section, specify IP addresses to be allowed or denied access to the namespace through CIFS. For instructions on doing this, see Adding and removing entries in Allow and Deny lists.

For information about how HCP handles IP addresses that appear in both or neither of the Allow and Deny lists, see Allow and Deny list handling.

Case Sensitivity section

To change CIFS case sensitivity:

1.Click Case Sensitivity.

2.In the Case Sensitivity section:

oTo make the CIFS protocol case insensitive, deselect Make CIFS case sensitive.

NoteWebHelp.png

Note: Disabling CIFS case sensitivity has a significant negative impact on performance.

oTo make the CIFS protocol case forcing, select Make CIFS case forcing. Then select either Lowercase or Uppercase to force object names to be lowercase or uppercase, respectively.

3.Click Update Settings in the Case Sensitivity section.

For more information about making the CIFS protocol case insensitive or case forcing, see CIFS case sensitivity.

© 2015, 2019 Hitachi Vantara Corporation. All rights reserved.

 

  • Was this article helpful?