[Samba] Multiprotocol File Sharing via NFSv4 and Samba

[Nico Kadel-Garcia]

On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 2:16 PM Kraus, Sebastian via samba
<samba at lists.samba.org> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
> are there any non-commercial solutions (apart from solutions like Dell EMC, IBM and NetApp) around that allow to simultaneously access the same file system via NFSv4 and Samba exports in a (nearly) non-conflicting manner, especially w.r.t. to NFSv4/Windows ACL incompatibilities?
>
> Best
> Sebatian

I've done it at a commercial scale with locally configured NFS on
Linux clients and Samba for CIFS access on windows clients. It's very
tricky to scale, and to maintain consistent privileges. NFSv4 map
somewhat, but not *perfectly* to CIFS credentials. And lock files
become an adventure, because clients *cannot* be entirely in sync with
a centralized server, the constant monitoring and updating to be in
tight4er and tighter sync themselves cost bandwidth and CPU. So
collaboration working with the same files can require thoughtful
programming to ensure atomic operation. I don't recommend it: I'd
generally recommend picking one protocol or the other and using it
everywhere. It's extraordinarily difficult to predict
incompatibilities someone may run into with ocmmercial software,
written to use lock files with *very* peculiar behavior. And of course
there is the filesystem namespace collission issue. In NFS, README.md"
is a different file from README.MD or readme.md, and resolving this
with CIFS clients o the same workspace can be an adventure.

There are many inexpensive office grade petabyte storage servers which
rely on Samba internally and would probably serve your needs.