I'm just setting up NAS (FreeNAS) with ZFS and was wondering which file sharing protocol / data transfer protocol is the best to use? Has anyone experiences?
I guess i have a very typical business setup. I do have an Microsoft Active Directory Domain (AD/LDAP) running on an Microsoft Server 2003. I'm going to access data from Mac, Windows (xp,7,8), windows server (2003,10,12) and linux.
I'm thinking of SMB/AFS/NFS. FTP is not a solution, since employees are working on the server and not duplicating data on their local machines.
Best Answer
SMB / CIFS / Samba
Seems to be the only real option in an real mixed environment:
Maybe opinionated but from my experience:
NFS (Network File System)
Originally comming from the unix/linux world, it has really poor integration into windows and mac. Neither of them supports it straig away and needs manual adjustments. Performance seems to be faster than SMB though.
It is better suitable for server to server file transfer. However, depending on the situation often file system replication like zfs replication, or rsync are better alternatives for this.
AFP (Apple File Protocol) - Winner for Max
Only accessible by Mac, thus not usable in a mixed environment, however if you have shares witch are only accessible from mac, you're better of with AFP for now. However this may change with future version of samba/cifs and mac's support for it