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Requirements and considerations for creating an SMB share

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Before creating an SMB share, you must understand requirements for share paths and share properties, particularly for home directories.

Creating an SMB share entails specifying a directory path structure (using the -path option in the vserver cifs share create command) that clients will access. The directory path corresponds to the junction path for a volume or qtree that you created in the SVM namespace. The directory path and corresponding junction path must exist before creating your share.

Share paths have the following requirements:

  • A directory path name can be up to 255 characters long.

  • If there is a space in the path name, the entire string must be put in quotes (for example, "/new volume/mount here").

  • If the UNC path (\\servername\sharename\filepath) of the share contains more than 256 characters (excluding the initial “\\” in the UNC path), then the Security tab in the Windows Properties box is unavailable.

    This is a Windows client issue rather than an ONTAP issue. To avoid this issue, do not create shares with UNC paths with more than 256 characters.

Share property defaults can be changed:

  • The default initial properties for all shares are oplocks, browsable, changenotify, and show-previous-versions.

  • It is optional to specify share properties when you create a share.

    However, if you do specify share properties when you create the share, the defaults are not used. If you use the -share-properties parameter when you create a share, you must specify all of the share properties that you want to apply to the share using a comma-delimited list.

  • To designate a home directory share, use the homedirectory property.

    This feature enables you to configure a share that maps to different directories based on the user that connects to it and a set of variables. Instead of having to create separate shares for each user, you can configure a single share with a few home directory parameters to define a user's relationship between an entry point (the share) and their home directory (a directory on the SVM).

    Note

    You cannot add or remove this property after creating the share.

Home directory shares have the following requirements:

  • Before creating SMB home directories, you must add at least one home directory search path by using the vserver cifs home-directory search-path add command.

  • Home directory shares specified by the value of homedirectory on the -share-properties parameter must include the %w (Windows user name) dynamic variable in the share name.

    The share name can additionally contain the %d (domain name) dynamic variable (for example, %d/%w) or a static portion in the share name (for example, home1_%w).

  • If the share is used by administrators or users to connect to other users' home directories (using options to the vserver cifs home-directory modify command), the dynamic share name pattern must be preceded by a tilde (~).

SMB management and vserver cifs share man pages have additional information.