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Provision NAS storage for Windows servers using SMB

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Create volumes to provide storage for Windows servers using the SMB protocol using System Manager, which is available with ONTAP 9.7 and later.

This procedure creates new volumes on an existing SMB-enabled storage VM and creates a share for the volume root (/) directory. You can accept systems defaults when configuring volumes or specify custom configurations. After initial SMB configuration, you can also create additional shares and modify their properties.

You can create FlexVol volumes, or for large file systems with high performance requirements, you can create FlexGroup volumes. See also Provision NAS storage for large file systems using FlexGroup volumes.

You can also save the specifications of this volume to an Ansible Playbook. For more details, go to Use Ansible Playbooks to add or edit volumes or LUNs.

If you want details about the range of ONTAP SMB protocol capabilities, consult the SMB reference overview.

Before you begin

  • Beginning in ONTAP 9.13.1, you can enable capacity analytics and Activity Tracking by default on new volumes. In System Manager, you can manage default settings at the cluster or storage VM level. For more information see Enable File System Analytics.

Steps

  1. Add a new volume in an SMB-enabled storage VM.

    1. Click Storage > Volumes and then click Add.

    2. Enter a name, select the storage VM, and enter a size.

      Only storage VMs configured with the SMB protocol are listed. If only one storage VM configured with the SMB protocol is available, the Storage VM field is not shown.

      • If you select Save at this point, System Manager uses system defaults to create and add a FlexVol volume.

      • You can select More options to customize the configuration of the volume to enable services such as authorization, quality of service, and data protection. Refer to Customize the volume configuration, then return here to complete the following steps.

  2. Switch to a Windows client to verify that the share is accessible.

    1. In Windows Explorer, map a drive to the share in the following format: \\_SMB_Server_Name__Share_Name_

    2. On the newly created drive, create a test file, write text to it, and then delete the file.

After verifying access, you can restrict client access with the share ACL and set any desired security properties on the mapped drive. See Create an SMB share for more information.

Add or modify shares

You can add additional shares after initial SMB configuration. Shares are created with default values and properties you select. These can be modified later.

You can set the following share properties when configuring a share:

After initial configuration, you can also modify these properties:

  • Symbolic links

    • Enable or disable symlinks and widelinks

  • Share properties

    • Allow clients to access Snapshot copies directory.

    • Enable oplocks, allowing clients to lock files and cache content locally (default).

    • Enable access-based enumeration (ABE) to display shared resources based on the access permissions of the user.

Procedures

To add a new share in an SMB-enabled volume, click Storage > Shares, click Add, and select Share.

To modify an existing share, click Storage > Shares, then click the Menu options icon and select Edit.

Customize the volume configuration

You can customize the volume configuration when you add volumes instead of accepting the system defaults.

You can customize the volume configuration when you add volumes instead of accepting the system defaults.

Procedure

After clicking More options, select the functionality you need and enter the required values.

  • Cache for remote volume.

  • Performance service level (quality of service, QoS).

    Beginning with ONTAP 9.8, you can specify a custom QoS policy or disable QoS, in addition to the default Value selection.

    • To disable QoS, select Custom, Existing, then none.

    • If you select Custom and specify an existing service level, a local tier is automatically chosen.

    • Beginning with ONTAP 9.9.1, if you choose to create a custom performance service level, you can use System Manager to manually select the local tier (Manual placement) on which you want to place the volume you are creating.

      This option is not available if you select the remote cache or FlexGroup volume options.

  • FlexGroup volumes (select Distribute volume data across the cluster).

    This option is not available if you previously selected Manual placement under Performance Service Level. Otherwise, the volume you are adding becomes a FlexVol volume by default.

  • Access permissions for the protocols for which the volume is configured.

  • Data protection with SnapMirror (local or remote), then specify the protection policy and settings for the destination cluster from the pull-down lists.

  • Select Save to create the volume and add it to the cluster and storage VM.

Note After you save the volume, return to Step 2 in the workflow to complete provisioning for Windows servers using SMB.

Other ways to do this in ONTAP

To perform this task with…​

Refer to…​

System Manager Classic (ONTAP 9.7 and earlier)

SMB configuration overview

The ONTAP command line interface

SMB configuration overview with the CLI