Hi Toasters,

                I just stumbled upon a change in 8.2.3/8.3 with respect to the dynamic home shares and curious to get other folks views on it.  Currently we make extensive use of the traditional static 7mode home directory share, cifs.homedir (\\filername\cifs.homedir).  This is further referenced behind DFS as a single link name with multiple targets.  It works great, allows for all users to have a static username defined in AD, allows migration of filers without massive user updates, DR, etc.  So life is good, or as good as it can be managing windows home directories.

                We’re now slowly staring to lifecycle 7mode clusters to cmode, which has had a few hiccups, but I expected that .  Prior to 8.2.3, you can replicate 7mode home directory functionality perfectly, even making up whatever static name you want.  Fast forward to just recently when I was configuring a small cluster at a remote location.  8.2.3, sure slap that on.  Configure the dynamic home directories, sure,errr…. no.  A seemingly innocent entry in the release notes for 8.2.3 states that static names are no longer acceptable.  A previously configured static share is brought forward and continues to function but you can no longer create new ones.  Any new dynamic home share has to have the username in it (%w or %u). 

                Needless to say this is a major change to our environment.  Automation changes, massive AD updates (close to a nightmare with our IT organization) and a complete invalidation of our DFS namespace structure for home directories.  Is anyone else similarly affected by this?  I’m struggling to understand what twisted logic guided this coding decision.

Thomas Tomlinson

Thomas.tomlinson@supervalu.com

Desk: 208-685-8404

Cel: 208-991-3704