NexentaStor - n00by tips and tricks

I now have a full licensed version of NexentaStor up and running for a client.

During the testing phase, I had run the trial software to make sure it had all the features as advertised and functioned in a way that would be practical for contractors like us, that prefer a slick solution that minimizes the tweaking around as much as possible!

Trail software was successfully run on:

• VMWare Player/Fusion
• Sun VirtualBox
• ASUS P5W DH Deluxe mobo - with additional PCIe Intel E1000 nic (onboard nics not supported)
• SuperMicro X6DVA series mobo

Had no problems joining it to a Windows 2003 Active Directory (mixed mode - with a legacy Windows 2000 DC), setting ACLs, snapshots, browsing the .zfs folder, etc, etc.

When it came to running on production hardware, we were unsuccessful getting it to run on:

• HP Proliant 160 G5
• We were able to install the Solaris nic drivers, however it would hang post install
• see: http://forums.opensolaris.com/message.jspa?messageID=2351
• suspect a video chipset issue!

Next we tried:

• SuperMicro X7SBL-LN1
• This was put into a Supermicro 4ru Jbod chassis - 16 x 1tb drives
• LSI SAS HBA - LSISAS3081E-R - set in jbod mode
• If you need help with SAS cables - these guys are great help: http://www.cs-electronics.com

No problems at all booting into NexentaStor now!

During this time, the production network did have a domain controller upgrade. The old Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 domain controllers were demoted and fresh new Windows 2008 domain controllers took over AD tasks for the network.

This is when I had the next challenge - I was able to get Nexentastor to join, and sometime NOT join the domain. Everything I did, could not get a AD user that was logged into a Windows box to access a CIFs share on NexentaStor.

After hitting a Nexenta support, DNF Storage support, and reading every detail in the Nexenta User Guide, I figured there was a problem with our AD upgrade. Soooo, if you have a domain joining issue, I urge you to check every bit of your DNS server setup in AD.

Even though in the forward zones, _msdcs.domain.lan all the relevant entries were correctly populated, the _msdcs zone within the domain.lan zone was incorrectly populated with old DCs entries.

Once this was created, everything was good to go.

One more gotcha... When setting ACLs on the CIF shares, don't just click every box in haste! If I did, I was still denied access to the share.

Set as follows:

• execute
• read
• create
• write
• delete
• but NO inherit

the inherit permission seemed to lock out access...