As a mather of fact, the answer is NO. Netapp allows you to use shares for Snapdrive, without a CIFS license.
 
The CIFS service needs to be started however and you will receive a CIFS License Violation warning in your syslog messages every time you access the share, but you can safely ignore it.
 
Grtz,
Tom

From: owner-toasters@mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of Milazzo Giacomo
Sent: donderdag 8 mei 2008 9:04
To: toasters@mathworks.com
Subject: SnapDrive for Windows & CIFS

Hi,

 

this is a good question: must CIFS be licensed to use SnapDrive for Windows?

 

I’ve never had the chance to perform some test but I think that the answer is “yes”. And you know why: because SnapDrive for Windows needs to ‘see’ and ‘reach’ the volume where you create the LUN(s) by CIFS using a UNC path.

It’s also true that there a limited CIFS that permit to access to the administrative share C$ but, as example, when I’ve tried to upgrade a DataOntap using the windows package, without a full CIFS license, the unzip of data failed!

 

So. Why customer ha sto spend money for an unused license if he needs only SAN functions.

 

Regards