Dell FluidFS Version 6.0 Release Notes

FluidFS Version 6.0 Features and Enhancements

Version 6.0.003169 introduced the following features and enhancements. For more information and detailed instructions about using these features, refer to the Dell Storage Manager Administrator’s Guide.

Multitenancy

Multitenancy enables a single physical FluidFS cluster to be connected to several separated environments and manage each environment separately. FluidFS v6 supports up to 100 tenants.

Multitenancy Data Access – Access through a VIP enumerates the SMB shares and NFS exports that belong to the tenant and connect to these shares and exports. Each tenant has separate access control settings, including the ability to join the same or separate Active Directory domains.

Multitenancy and Data Protection – When the multitenancy feature is enabled on the local or partner systems, the global administrator has the ability to create a partner relation between the tenants on the source system and tenants on the remote system.

NOTE The NAS Volume Subnet Restriction feature has been deprecated starting in FluidFS v6. Use the multitenancy feature instead to restrict access to NAS Volumes.

SMB3.1 and SMB3.1.1

SMB protocol 3.1.1 dialect adds pre-authentication integrity, cipher negotiation, AES-128-GCM cipher and cluster dialect fencing. Pre-authentication integrity improves protection from an attacker in tampering with SMB’s connection establishment and authentication of messages. The cipher can now be negotiated during connection establishment. In addition to AES-128-CCM cipher used at SMB 3.0.x, Windows 10 (and Windows Server 2016) added AES-128-GCM cipher in SMB 3.1.1. The GCM mode offers a significant performance gain.

SMB3 Multi-Channel

FS8600 supports multi-channel for SMB 3.x clients (Windows 8 and later, Windows Server 2012 and later). This feature allows clients to create multiple TCP connections for a single SMB session. Multi-channel can improve performance by increasing the number of commands the client can transmit simultaneously, and by allowing clients to use multiple physical network interfaces. Administrators must enable SMB3.0 multi-channel if they want clients to be able to use it, as it might increase the number of TCP connections. Administrators should enable it only after verifying that the current SMB sessions are not near the supported limit for their FS8600 cluster.

SMB3 Dynamic Access Control

SMB3 dynamic access control enables administrators to apply access-control permissions and restrictions based on well-defined rules that can include the sensitivity of the resources, the job or role of the user, and the configuration of the device that is used to access these resources. Dynamic access provides tools for administrators to define privileges in a more compact way than traditional ACEs.

NOTE Dynamic access control is supported in Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 operating systems only.

SMB Change Notify Full Support

WATCH TREE requests enable clients, such as IIS, to cache SMB share contents locally, improving performance.

Changes to the following subscription types now trigger change notifications to the subscriber:

Attributes – Any attribute change on any file or directory inside the subscribed folder
Size – Any file size change (change in file size when the file is actually written to the disk
Last write – mtime change
Last access – atime change
Creation – Create time change
Security – Security-descriptor change (SetACL with DACL/SASL, SetOwner, SetGoup)
Stream name – Alternate data stream name is added
Stream size – Alternate data stream size change
Stream write – Alternate data stream write operation

NOTE

These new change notifications are disabled by default. NAS administrators can enable or disable change notification settings using the CLI. If the new change notifications are left disabled, changes will trigger a generic notification to clients.
NAS administrators have per-NAS volume option to enable or disable recursive notifications.

NFSv4 Advisory Locks

FluidFS NFSv4 supports mandatory byte-range locks. With multitenancy enabled, NAS administrators can configure NFSv4 to switch from mandatory to advisory locks at the tenant level using the CLI.

FTP and FTPS User Authentication and Encryption

Starting with FluidFS v6, anonymous access to FTP and FTPS is disabled by default. Only authenticated users can log in. If you are updating from FluidFS v5, with active FTP or FTPS and landing directory, you will still be able to access FTP and FTPS as anonymous like before.

NAS administrators can enable anonymous FTP and FTPS access per tenant, using the CLI. When authenticated using the user name and password, the connection is encrypted.

Display More Details On Connected SMB Sessions

NAS administrators have the ability to list currently opened SMB sessions to monitor users activities on the cluster. Session information includes a protocol version, Controller ID, User, Client IP, number of open files, connected time, idle time, whether the session is a guest session, and the connected VIP. FluidFS v6 adds the following session information for performance analysis and security verification:

Whether the user session client-server communication is signed
Whether the user session client-server communication encrypted
Whether the user session is negotiated with multi-channel ability

SMB and NFS Version Configuration

Version 6.0.140010, enables you to configure supported SMB and NFS versions, including disabling SMB1 connections.

One To Many and Cascaded Replication

This feature enables users to create more complicated replication topologies, enhancing their disaster recovery options:

The same NAS volume can be replicated simultaneously to multiple destinations.
Data can be cascaded from the production cluster to a secondary cluster, and replicated from the secondary . This option reduces the load on the production cluster.

These two options can be used together in order to comply with the organization’s disaster recovery topology and requirements

Replication WAN Optimization

When enabled, this feature optimizes replication by reducing bandwidth consumption. Data is deduplicated and compressed during replication without impacting the cluster performance.

Active Directory Organizational Unit

NAS administrators can specify the organizational unit when joining any organizational units inside an Active Directory domain. This feature is beneficial for users who use organizational units inside the Active Directory domain to manage their accounts.

Control Local Account UID and GID

NAS Administrators have the ability to define and display local users UIDs and local groups GIDs using the following CLI commands:

CLI> client-access authentication local-users view Administrator
CLI> client-access authentication local-groups view Administrators

To display UID or GID columns in the CLI:

CLI> client-access authentication local-users list
CLI> client-access authentication local-groups list

Metadata Tiering

Metadata tiering provides the ability to store data and metadata in different storage tiers . When creating or expanding a NAS pool, administrators can specify the Storage Center tiers to use for data and metadata. The NAS administrator has the option to optimize the setting for metadata-intensive I/O patterns, which allocates a larger portion of the NAS pool for metadata than the non-optimized setting.

128 TB Files

The size of files supported by FluidFS has increased from 16 TB to 128 TB, starting with this release.

SNMP v3

FluidFS supports SNMP v3 (read requests) and v2, but does not support using both versions at the same time. SNMP v3 requires user authentication.

Automated Scheduled Reports

Administrators can schedule reports in Dell Storage Manager for system capacity, performance, load-balancing, and NAS volume content statistics.

Statistics on NAS Volume Contents

FluidFS v6 provides statistics about files, based on their size and age.

Improved Protocols and File Access Diagnostics

Improve support process for administrators handling data-access issues.

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