so your requirement is to have replication for the CIFS server and only one of the file systems ?  When you say share, do you mean you want to create another file system ? Because you can create multiple shares on the same file system. I would keep it simple, either create second file system under vdm01 and replicate it or consider creating another CIFS server and vdm02.

when you switch over CIFS server is no longer available on source VNX, wouldn't you want to have both file systems and the CIFS server be available on target VNX ? Maybe i am missing your requirement ?  If you have one VDM, inside of the VDM you have multiple file systems ..you will setup replication for VDM itself as well as the individual file systems.

We'd be replicating both file systems. But the way I understand

replication is if we perform a switchover to test - we'd have to switchover

the VDM and when we do the VDM goes RO on the source side. So my approach

is to have each filesystem have it's own VDM to get around this issue.

Like I mention we are very new to this and if this is not a good idea I'd

sure entertain a better one.

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yep, either another CIFS server (inside of another VDM)  or replicate all file systems that are part of the VDM and set expectations what would happen when failover occurs.

But a switchover test would then require both filesystems be unavailable

when using a single VDM, whereas having separate VDM's this isn't an issue.

I understand what you're saying but if we only want to test a single file

system - using a single VDM makes all file systems under that VDM

inaccessible. For the most flexibility we'd want each filesystem to have

it's own VDM.

if CIFS server is not available you can't get to anything anyway.

Good point since a switchover would point VNXCIFS to the DR site.

So it would be best to create a new CIFS server - or - know that when you

test a switchover all filesystems associated with the VDM would be

unavailable.

Thank you for this great discussion - it has shed light on several issues

for this newbie and we'll plan accordingly.

Please take a look at the CIFS and VDM manuals – they explains the basic architecture and functionality.

One CIFS server can only be in one VDM while one VDM can host multiple CIFS servers

One of the big features of a VDM is security / segregation – so it is designed that a CIFS server in one VDM cannot access data in other VDMs

If you want to be able to share and to failover together – put into the same VDM

If you want to prohibit access from others or failover separately – put into a different VDM