Unfortunately, the answer is no to all of the above.

However, it's not as difficult as it may seem to delete and re-add the CIFS server to the domain. All the localgroups will remain intact, and if you do it in an offline window, the whole operation should take no more than 10-15 minutes.

Less if you script it.

HTH
-bill

What is the purpose of doing it? If you want to have two devices and can keep the same IP configuration the existing CIFS servers is having - you can do it with a little downtime.

1) Delete the CIFS servers using IP Addresses on the FSN
2) Delete the interface (IP addresses) on the FSN
3) Delete the FSN Device
4) If required, you can use etherchannel now or else stay with physical CGE device
5) Create the Interfaces on the physical CGE Device keeping the same IP Addresses, subnet mask etc
6) Create the CIFS server(s) with same name and using the same interfaces (IP addresses) - no need to join to the domain now as the computer account already exists in the domain.
7) Check that the CIFS servers are still joined to the domain (you may use server_cifs command) and available on the network.

There should not be any issue as the same CIFS Server credentials will be maintained. In worse case, you may have to unjoin the server from the domain and re-join it back. Anyway that will not cause any loss of data or users access permissions, Shares and ACL details..

However, since you will be changing the production environment, it may be a better option to involve EMC support in the process and guiding you accordingly.

Please note, this is my personal comments - don't take it as official procedure

Thanks,
Sandip

Hi BruceArden,

Hope you have successfully completed the process of converting FSN to CGE. Please let us know otherwise.

Thanks,
Sandip

No, I haven't been able to arrange the downtime to do this yet. My other problem is that I don't have the Windows access required to rejoin the domain if anything goes wrong. (Actually this machine still uses NT4 protocol rather than Active Directory, but my access problem is the same).

I was considering modifying the ifconfig, netd & virutal_devs files in /nbsnas/server/slot_2 and rebooting. I guess this would be unsupported, but would it work? [I was unsure what the tab version (eg ifconfigtab) of these files were used for, but thought there would be no harm if these were changed at the same time].

- Bruce

´
Dont do this !!!

there are dependencies between these files and the NASDB, where there actually is a version control system.

If you change these config files directly you risk that the data mover wont boot correctly

If you need this done urgently call EMC support and see if Tech2 support agrees to dialin and can do the changes