[ale] Mounting /home and /data with cifs on a server?

[scott]

NOTE:  I do NAS (NFS/CIFS/iSCSI) for a living.  I do ALOT of it.

Ok. I have been following the thread remotely since I have been at the  
BarCampATL3 and then I had work to do.

If you are having performance issues with NFS, then one of few things  
are the culprit:
* using a Window Server (or desktop) as the NFS server (they can do  
NFS but not that well)
* using UDP for NFS instead of TCP.  Please o Please use TCP based  
NFS, it is much much better.  Trust me.
* your NFS server is over whelmed.
* your network is having some sort of bandwith issue or latency issue.

Looking at the two protocols, NFS (v3) and CIFS, the NFS protocol is a  
LOT less chatty on the wire.  CIFS is approximately 20-30x more chatty  
(all depends on size of files, larger the files the less chatty it  
is).   Also you are now you are probably asking why I specified v3.   
Well v2 is UDP only and that introduces a whole slew of other issues.   
And v3 has been the default for a long time now.  There is a v4 but  
most people are not using it yet.  As far as my testing (not live  
production experience) that v3 and v4 performance is the same.

I would suspect that you are not using NFS over tcp.  It is easy to  
do. add the "tcp" option in the options section of the fstab.  Also  
you will want to set your read/write buffer size.  Otherwise they are  
small.  Do at least 16k but not more than 32k.  Getting too large will  
also give performance problems.  My sweet spot that I have found (and  
it works most places) is 32k.

Now to your question, about userids != the uids being used.  That is a  
very common problem.  What you will have to do, is setup AD (active  
directory) and add the extra fields used by linux into it.  Then use  
AD for  ALL AUTHENICATIONS for all hosts (linux via pam_* and  
Windows).  Then you have to fudge around with a bunch of things.  It  
will take weeks worth of work if you work on it 8+ hours a day.  And  
it isnt very well documented.

The other thing is let it use the uid of the single user.  Sucks but  
it works.

for your information, in my house, I have a single windows box (I play  
games on it and only that), several Macs (yes, I am a mac guy) and  
many many linux machines (some physical some virtual).  I run NFS  
between all the Linux hosts.  I have samba running CIFS on a single  
linux host sharing out a single folder to my windows box.  Macs I used  
ExanDrive to mount drives via ssh.  I could do NFS via the cli.  So  
99% of my traffic/usage is NFS or SSH (more of the former over the  
later).  Especially since the window machine isnt ever on unless I am  
gaming.

If you ever want to talk about the NFS performance issues, please let  
me know.


On Oct 25, 2009, at 3:08 PM, Robert L. Harris wrote:

>
>   Has anyone mounted /home or /data (random dir containing user data)
> from a CIFS
> mount instead of NFS?  I'm looking at some performance issues with a  
> NAS
> server
> and it appears CIFS is more repsonsive.  The only problem is if I  
> mount
> /home
> with:
>
> //lincoln/home          /home   cifs
> credentials=/root/samba-creds.txt,workgroup=foobar      0       0
>
> and use the creds of root to mount the dirs, then any files I create  
> as
> user "robert" end
> up created owned by user root on the server, and thus user root on the
> clients hosing
> up /home, etc.
>
> Thoughts?
>   Robert
>
>
>
> -- 
>
> :wq!
> ====================================================================
> Robert L. Harris                     | GPG Key ID: E344DA3B
>                                          @ x-hkp://pgp.mit.edu
> DISCLAIMER:
>       These are MY OPINIONS             With Dreams To Be A King,
>        ALONE.  I speak for              First One Should Be A Man
>        no-one else.                       - Manowar
>
>
>
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