Solaris and CIFS
We have now completed the Solaris integration of our in-kernel
CIFS service..
The Common Internet File System (CIFS), also known as SMB, is the standard
for Microsoft file sharing services. The Solaris CIFS Service provides
the file sharing and MSRPC administration services required for Windows-
like behavior for interoperability with CIFS clients (typically Windows based desktops and servers). There are already perfectly good open source CIFS implementations such as Samba (an open source CIFS server included in Solaris), so why did we add an in-kernel implementation? Bob Porras, engineering VP for Solaris storage explains why in his blog. By integrating the CIFS server directly into the Solaris kernel, CIFS now becomes a first class citizen in Solaris, and gets tight integration with NFS, ZFS, and Active Directory. Our CIFS implementation is certainly complementary to our work with the Samba community. The advantages of an in-kernel implementation is that we can provide much tighter integration of CIFS with other Solaris features, like ZFS and with the upcoming Solaris virus scan service based on the
ICAP protocol. After all, who wants better Windows file services without better virus scanning?
Excellent! Can we expect a 'sharecifs=on' anytime soon? :)
Posted by Dick Davies on October 30, 2007 at 07:58 AM PDT #
Yes, the CIFS functionality should appear in binary form in the next bi-weekly build of Solaris Express Community Edition.
Posted by Marc Hamilton on October 30, 2007 at 08:06 AM PDT #
To answer my own question : looks like we get 'sharesmb' in b77 Nevada :
http://opensolaris.org/os/community/on/flag-days/76-80/
Posted by Dick Davies on October 30, 2007 at 08:07 AM PDT #
Great news but I'd of thought Sun would of already had kernel aware CIFS support in Solaris 10. One needs CIFS support to compete with filer's like NetApp. NFS only limits you to the UNIX only market.
Good to see Sun starting giving customers what they want.
Posted by Bryan on October 30, 2007 at 04:00 PM PDT #
NetApps is a special purpose, proprietary, file server appliance. We don't plan to compete directly with NetApps with Solaris 10, our general purpose operating system. We do have multiple products, both systems products and software products, under development which we believe will provide very attractive value propositions to NetApps customers, and those products certainly will make use of the new CIFS capability. You will have to wait until we announce those products to learn the details, although keeping up with the Solaris Flag Days postings at http://opensolaris.org/os/community/on/flag-days/all/
certainly gives you some clues as to what we might be planning.
Posted by Marc Hamilton on October 30, 2007 at 04:09 PM PDT #
This is really great news! We were bit hard trying to implement Samba on Linux a while back. Because it doesn't quite "fake" Windows well enough, we ran into all sorts of problems. From Alan Wright's blog entry, it's clear you're taking a look at all the right issues.
My interest in CIFS on Solaris? ILM using SAMFS and cheap storage (Thumper, ZFS and LTO4)...
Posted by Charles Soto on November 05, 2007 at 07:46 AM PST #
If Sun's implementation handles authentication of encrypted Windows passwords to CIFS shares, (enableplaintextpassword=false) then they will beat NetApp at the CIFS game hands down. Is that possible? Can the Sun implementation decrypt/authenticate Windows passwords without a seperate domain controller setup? That...would be great.
Posted by John L. Johnson on November 08, 2007 at 08:23 AM PST #