SMB or ISCSI?

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tom__w

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Mar 26, 2013
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Looking for more opinions...

I want to share one large 'Z' drive for my business of 50 computers. I have two options:

1* Direct SMB share through FreeNAS (U6)
2* Presented to VM via ISCSI and share through VM

I know option 1 allows me to directly access my snapshots and roll back individual files if I need to. But I have also been told that there are share incompatibilities between FreeNAS and Windows that may bite me in the future. I have actually seen some of these and they relate to propagation to sub folders. Perhaps U6 fixed many of these potentials pitfalls?

Option 2 is seamless but may be slower because of the ISCSI overhead. Option 2 also doesn't allow direct access to snapshots, instead requiring I restore an entire drive and create a new ISCSI connection to it.

I am leaning in a direction ... but can be swayed.

Thoughts?
 

jgreco

Resident Grinch
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May 29, 2011
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In general, the Samba project has been pretty good about fixing Windows incompatibilities. This is also by far the best way to access NAS data.

https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...quires-more-resources-for-the-same-result.41/

However, it is not perfect. You can get "best" compatibility by licensing a copy of Windows Server and using that to serve up an iSCSI-attached drive. This is resource- and cost-intensive though, and works with substantially less performance.
 
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