I am trying to retire a 6 year old xserve with an equally old xserve RAID. We are looking at unified storage solutions from both Dell/Compellent and EMC. I have no personal experience with Mac's accessing non-mac file system storage, so I feel somewhat at risk.
Do you have experience with Mac clients accessing SMB/CIFS or NFS shares on either a Windows server or a NAS (in an Active Directory bound environment)? If so, I would appreciate your take on the following questions.
- Does Mac Mt. Lion, out of the box, have sufficiently robust smb connectivity to be able to access SMB/CIFS shares as primary file shares? If my day-to-day work depended on robust connectivity to a file share, would mac smb in Mt. Lion (whatever it is based
on) be production/enterprise ready?
- Can Mac Mt. Lion, out of the box, use a Windows or NAS share for a home directory over smb or nfs (in an Active Directory environment)? Can this be effective for both network-only and mobile users?
- Is there anything to be aware of when considering support of SMBv1 vs. SMBv2 when evaluating NAS solutions? Are there any "gotcha's" in SMBv1?
- Thursby Software produces "Dave", commercial software providing "commercial grade Microsoft DFS and Microsoft SMB/CIFS". What makes this product viable? Are there deficiencies in out-of-the-box SMB that make products like Dave necessary? I personally don't
want to add $20,000 to my storage project to outfit clients with additional software to make it all work.
- How viable is Microsoft's DFS Namespace for providing client access to file shares?
I am certain others have integrated Mac clients into a Windows data storage environment. If you are one who has done so, I would be grateful for a brief phone conversation. I don't need to know how to build a clock; I just need to know the time.
Thanks,
Andy Gerhard
Sr. Network and Systems Administrator
Cherry Hills Community Church
Cherry Hills Christian Schools
303-325-8207 (anytime)
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