Yes, DFS definitely will let you do this. It's for free too. It is pretty much like NFS for windows. There are quite a few other benefits. But you would need to transition everyone onto that.

DFS as Microsoft distribute it is usable but pretty hard to maintain. You might want to look at the VFM product that NeApp has. It adds quite a few number of tools (auto failover, auto migration, reporting) to DFS.

Derek

-----Original Message----- From: Skottie Miller [mailto:skottie@anim.dreamworks.com] Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2004 9:51 AM To: Jack Lyons Cc: 'toasters@mathworks.com' Subject: Re: QTree Size limits

Jack Lyons wrote:

I have a 1.31 TB volume that is 90% full. There are two solutions I have available to me. One is to try to reduce the amount of space on the volume (but meeting resistance by users). The other is to add space. I am trying to get approval for another TB of disk space, but I don't think the best solution is to add it to the existing QTree. My backup window for this volume is 14 -15 hours currently and would only get bigger if I add space and that is not acceptable. I know I can another qtree / cifs share but I was hoping I could do it in such a way that I would still have another Qtree but make it available to the user via a single CIFS Share.

seems you may want to investigate backup system changes; a 14 hour window for a 1.3 TB volume is terrible. what backup product(s) are you using?

For reference, we churn 800 - 1.2 TB per night, out of 40 TB online, and the first-phase backup window (filer to stage pools) is 4 - 6 hours long. Then the data moves from staging pool to tape, outside the backup window. We use Tivoli storage manager off three Linux backup servers, doing file-at-a-time differential backups over NFS.

I was hoping I could add another volume, probably /vol/vol2 with a qtree called /vol/vol2/active clients and some how make it appear to the user as a subdirectory under \server\creative file:///\\server\creative

Do you use DFS to mount shares ? My windows guys think DFS supports nesting shares as you describe.

-skottie