How to move a folder on Isilon OneFS

Question

Hi, I have a single folder on my /ifs filesystem with the following properties: 1) It is used as a CIFS export 2) It is used as an NFS export 3) It has a quota configured on it 4) Users are actively using the CIFS and NFS exports.  I am trying to move this folder to another place on the OneFS filesystem (to distribute data for backup accelerator nodes), and am experincing trouble being able to access this folder on the via the CIFS protocol after simply moving it from the command line.  I've destroyed and re-created the CIFS share, and reassigned permissions.  I get a generic 'the share does not exist on this server' type of error message on different platforms (Win7, OS X). Do people have a specific process they follow when trying to move a CIFS share on the OneFS filesystem?  Do I need to kill active SMB sessions or flush anything from memory or restart processes or anything like that? Thank-you, Dan Sullivan

Peter_Sero · Accepted Answer

CIFS is session-based and moving the toplevel dir of a share will badly confuse existing sessions.

On the CLI use

isi smb session list

isi smb session delete ...

to clean things up.

BTW, by moving directories around under /ifs you can't affect the layout or distribution among nodes; it takes SmartPools to do so (if you have pools of different node types). By moving directories one might build a directory tree more suitable for parallel backup processing of multiple subtrees, though.

Peter

cincystorage · Answer

Peter is right on point here - but also you can use symbolic links on the /ifs file system to reference paths which you move.  After moving your path from /ifs/previous/location to /ifs/new/location you can make a symbolic link in the old location pointing to the new location - thus not needing to update your CIFS shares.  I've never seen anything from EMC/Isilon about this being supported/unsupported - but it works.

Peter_Sero · Answer

I did some quick tests for NFS (we rarely use CIFS) and symlinks, under 6.5.5.11

Moving an NFS export folder does NOT immediately break existing mounts on clients ;-)

Providing a symlink at the old location, pointing to the new location, leaves one in a

situation where the share cannot be NFS-mounted by new clients.

(clients side: Permission denied;

server side, isi nfs export check: Check failed, ... is not a directory)

Deleting and re-establishing the NFS export for the symlink (old) location yields

an export for the actual directory at the new location. I.e. the symlink is followed

during once the export creation and is out of the picture afterwards.

That's probably quite different from the situation with CIFS; and

you mentioned your shares are NFS and CIFS at the same time...

Peter

chvalent · Answer

One possibility is to use SyncIQ to copy the data to the new location. Then, after the first sync has completed:

1. Disable SMB

2. Disable NFS

3. Kill all SMB sessions

4. Change your CIFS and NFS export paths

5. Run a final SyncIQ job to make sure everything is in sync

6. Delete the SyncIQ policy and brake the target link

7. Restart SMB and NFS

It is obviously disruptive for ~5 minutes.

dsulli99 · Answer

In addition to this, if you want the share to still exist, you are going to have to wait until jobs (i.e. FSAnalyze) are finished running. If you do this, and then re-create the CIFS share (and NFS export), you should be able to move a folder on /ifs.

Thank-you everybody for your replies. It appears that the things that were potentially causing the most problems were:

1) Active SMB sessions on the share

2) Jobs running in the background

I did not test/validate any of the recommendations with respect to symlinking.

Isilon

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