BG Blog: Barry Greenberg's Blog

You may have heard recently that a native implementation of the Windows CIFS protocol (née SMB) was introduced into OpenSolaris in October. The Solaris CIFS service makes it debut in Solaris Express Developer's Edition 1/08 adding a critical component for Windows interoperability. After numerous past adventures in the world of Windows interoperability--PC-NFS, PC Netlink, Wabi--Sun has done what many would have thought heresy only a few short years ago: embedding support for Windows users and file sharing semantics deep into the Solaris kernel. How deep? A SID can now be stored as the file owner in the ZFS file system. A Windows client can access a Solaris file server with an Active Directory-authenticated user ID and no associated Solaris UID. I could go on but much has already been written on the various aspects of Solaris that was modified, extended, and enhanced to make CIFS file sharing a first class citizen among Solaris file services. Alan Wright, the architect of the Solaris CIFS project describes the experience of bringing CIFS to Solaris: the motivation, the goals, the sleepless nights, and the 22 ARC cases in CIFS ... in Solaris. Afshin Salek discusses some of the challenges encountered when converging these two worlds in his blog CIFS for Solaris: A new protocol, a new world. Doug McCallum shows us how to use the standard tool for managing NFS shares to just as easily manage CIFS shares in his blogs Sharemgr gets a new protocol and SMB vs. ZFS. Nico Williams talks about some of the interesting Solaris brain surgery that was required to take Windows interoperability in Solaris to a new level in his blog Dealing with Windows SIDs in Solaris. As you'll see with the Solaris Express Developer's Edition 1/08 we're serious about making Solaris the absolute best storage platform for customers and developers.