CIFS+AFP with iSCSI possible combo? Is FreeNAS suitable for our small company? Desperate for help

[KalleDelorean]

At work (~15 employees) we're using a QNAP. Sharing the same files over both AFP and Samba/CIFS. One share is built in drives of the QNAP and the other is a large RAID unit connected via iSCSI.

This works horribly bad mainly for two reasons:
- Connection times are slow for Mac users (regardless of using AFP or Samba)
- Permissions are completely messed up. Right now many users can write files one day, and the other day they can't. Nobody knows why. This is horrible.

We need to use the iSCSI unit, so that's a factor in the equation.

We need AFP since some users rely heavily on Spotlight searching (large archives of sound effects to be searched). We need Samba since we have many Windows users. I have yet to figure out if spotlight searching an iSCSI unit over Samba is possible. Spotlight indexing network drives seems a mystery from my googling so far.

I know most about our system and file sharing at work, but I lack knowledge in permission handling. I know how chmodding bits work, and I know there's something called ACL.
I've been to the command line on the QNAP "setfacl"-ing to my hearts content sometimes getting things to work for a short while but overall I think the QNAP is doing something wrong (many intermittent issues).

When using FreeNAS - do you use both standard 'nix permissions (0777 stuff) and ACL? Can everything be handled via the admin GUI or do you need to use the command line now and then to keep the system running smoothly, as indicated in this stickied Sharing thread?

This sums up my fears and lack of knowledge quite well, from a serverfault thread:

Yep, just create two shares. Keep in mind that when sharing via two or more methods, permissions may get wonky depending on how you have things set up.

Things are very wonky today and we are desperate to find a solution. Is our main plan/idea even feasible?

Excuse the lack of structure in my question, it's just many vague issues grouped together I'm desperately trying to find the solution to.

To sum it up:

- I'm thinking "Maybe FreeNAS" can solve what the QNAP can't?
- But is the combo even viable? AFP + CIFS, and using iSCSI device for sharing. Will permissions be working?
- Can Spotlight search be handled over CIFS, letting us skip AFP altogether?
- I have installed FreeNAS to virtual machine and tested it for a bit but I fear I can't preemptively test permissions in a good manner.
- I have no idea what happens on the file system when regular 'nix permissions and ACL permissions are used/written. Maybe it's impossible to use both, on iSCSI, over AFP, or Samba, or both, or none?
- The permissions we want to use are super simple, you need to log in to access stuff but we all access the same files freely after that. This can't be solved with a QNAP in our current setup at the moment.

 

[Ericloewe]

Sharing the same data via AFP and CIFS simultaneously is known to yield bad results. However, if you can keep the stuff more or less separate, you can share different subsets of your data via different protocols.

Spotlight is said to support CIFS volumes after some configuration.

Can you clarify what the iSCSI device is doing?

 

[KalleDelorean]

Sharing the same data via AFP and CIFS simultaneously is known to yield bad results. However, if you can keep the stuff more or less separate, you can share different subsets of your data via different protocols.

Spotlight is said to support CIFS volumes after some configuration.

Can you clarify what the iSCSI device is doing?

Our iSCSI is a 'VessRAID' unit, it simply acts as a single big drive sharing files.

What do you mean with keeping stuff more or less separate? Do you mean sharing one set of files for AFP users and one set for CIFS?

 

[Ericloewe]

Our iSCSI is a 'VessRAID' unit, it simply acts as a single big drive sharing files.

What do you mean with keeping stuff more or less separate? Do you mean sharing one set of files for AFP users and one set for CIFS?

Yeah. OS X users could still access the CIFS stuff easily.

Do I understand correctly you want FreeNAS to be the iSCSI initiator and provide network shares stored on said device?

 

[KalleDelorean]

Yeah. OS X users could still access the CIFS stuff easily.

Do I understand correctly you want FreeNAS to be the iSCSI initiator and provide network shares stored on said device?

I'm 90% sure that is what I mean. Lacking 10% due to not being sure of the terminology perfectly.
Our QNAP has a list of iSCSI targets, and we enter the IP of the VessRAID and it detects that as a target, so I think the QNAP is the initiator in that scenario.
And naturally FreeNAS would take this role, so also be the initiator, and then share this drive to the network.


With the QNAP the iSCSI unit is connected as a 'Virtual Disk Drive'. One of the main problems (I think) is the following statement from the QNAP admin GUI:

Subfolder permissions are not supported on external devices or virtual disk drives.

I fear that this is due to permission handling between systems and perhaps not something that would be unique for the QNAP (so FreeNAS could have the same issue). No idea what the actual problem is though.

 

[Ericloewe]

I'm 90% sure that is what I mean. Lacking 10% due to not being sure of the terminology perfectly.
Our QNAP has a list of iSCSI targets, and we enter the IP of the VessRAID and it detects that as a target, so I think the QNAP is the initiator in that scenario.
And naturally FreeNAS would take this role, so also be the initiator, and then share this drive to the network.


With the QNAP the iSCSI unit is connected as a 'Virtual Disk Drive'. One of the main problems (I think) is the following statement from the QNAP admin GUI:


I fear that this is due to permission handling between systems and perhaps not something that would be unique for the QNAP (so FreeNAS could have the same issue). No idea what the actual problem is though.

Unfortunately, as far as I know and going by the documentation, FreeNAS doesn't support acting like an iSCSI initiator, only as an iSCSI target.
It may be possible with some command line fu, but it would not be supported.

FreeNAS is focused on providing the storage itself, so the iSCSI initiator role isn't supported...