Mapping SMB onto Distributed Storage

The SMB protocol is, and always has been, an extension of the Operating Systems and File Systems on which it was designed to run. Yes, that means DOS/FAT, OS2/HPFS, and Windows/NTFS. Building an SMB server on any other platform requires a lot of special handling, sort of like the special pounding of a square peg into a round hole with a finely tuned sledgehammer. The design of many newer file systems, particularly object, cluster, and distributed storage systems, complicates matters even more by "relaxing" adherence to standard semantics. This presentation will highlight a number of ways in which these "relaxed fit" file systems clash with SMB expectations, and will provide some examples of ways to bridge the gap.

Learning Objectives

Problems to look for when integrating SMB with a Distributed File System.
SMB integration problem solving approaches.
The importance of itemizing integration SMB problems.