I've run into another oddity recently on our cluster with respect to Windows 2003 and Windows 7 (using Explorer or even plain batch files, C# programs, FORTRAN programs, etc) and files on a CIFS share mapped without our fully-qualified-domain name. Our files are being stored on an Isilon running OneFS 6.5 (plus some minor rev).
If I map the drive like so:
net use z: \\isilon\folder\
And add files to that same folder from another machine in the cluster, the delay prior to seeing the files in Windows Explorer (or any program) on any other machine is infinite!
That is, unless I do something like the following:
echo 1 >z:\test.txt
Once I issue a write to the directory from my own machine, I can then see all of the other changes to that directory in Windows Explorer or a program of my choosing.
However, if I map the drive like so:
net use y: \\isilon.fqdn.com\folder
I receive updates in a timely fashion. I've even used sample programs which merely loop-and-poll over the directory and without the FQDN they do not receive any updates!
Is there a setting on Windows which causes this behavior w.r.t. CIFS shares? Or is this an oddity of our Isilon?
Best Answer
When analyzing the network traffic between Windows Explorer and our Isilon cluster (running 6.5.4.17), a large number of SMB messages with an NTSTATUS of
STATUS_NOT_IMPLEMENTEDwere seen when the non-FQDN was used.In effect, change notification does not appear to be (well) supported when using Netbios name resolution versus DNS name resolution. The solution is to instead always use the fully qualified domain name when mapping CIFS shares on an Isilon cluster.