[OpenIndiana-discuss] Multiple Windows servers and a OI NAS, how to get there

[Natxo Asenjo]

On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 8:58 AM, Open Indiana <openindiana at out-side.nl>wrote:

> I have multiple Windows 2008 servers that need to write to a shared storage
> somewhere in the network.
> One of the servers will gather and process all files on that drive.
>
> We thought we were good with iSCSI but that doesn't seem to work, because
> multiple Windows machines cannot share a NTFS partition.
>
> I tried to create a networkshare to the networkdrive on every server, but
> that gives a lot of problems with the services since they cannot find the
> share when the original user has logged off.
>
> if I understand it correctly, you want to have a sort of mount point like
a nfs mount point that stays mapped even when nobody is logged in to the
windows systems, correct?

You have, I think, two solutions. The first one is only available for newer
windows servers, I think. The second is a nice hack that will probably
never be supported if you run into trouble but I have used it and it works
:-)

1. use mklink (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_symbolic_link) to create a
symbolink link anywhere on the local drives to the share.

mklink /d d:\mylink \\server\share

You have to create the link on every windows server, obviously. I used the
d: drive, use whatever you like/can :-)

2. run net use letter: \\server\share during computer startup (using group
policy). This way it will run as windows user SYSTEM and the drive letter
will be available to everybody.

Is there anyone who has successfully created a stable NAS solution in OI
> that can be used and written by Multiple Windows clients?
>
> not yet with OI, but yes with other unix variants. We use at $WORK netapp
and it works great. For what I am seeing in OI or other solaris
derivatives, it really is not much different from netapp featurewise.

-- 
natxo