+----- On Tue, 06 Oct 1998 09:38:35 CDT, sirbruce writes: | On 10/05/98 10:44:36 you wrote: | > | >+----- On Fri, 02 Oct 1998 20:07:01 CDT, writes: | >| The last time the subject of ACLs came up, I sent | >| out a message that said the following: | >| | >| I'd like to see them support all the different ACL types, Solaris, NT, | >| Digital Unix, Irix, etc. (at least, I think the latter two have them) | >| and have them all interoperate reasonably well. But that's no doubt a | >| big undertaking for Netapp with very little return. | >| | >| It might make more sense is to wait on a standard ACL protocol (maybe | >| as part of NFS v4) and then implement that and everyone will talk the | >| same language. | > | >The ACL's are handled with a separate protocol which is IMHO the best | >way to handle them. One only needs to look at the SMB^H^H^HCIFS | >protocol to see the wisdom of doing it this way. The protocol is even | >rudimentally described in /usr/include/rpcsvc/nfs_acl.x. | > | >| I hve reasons to believe the above statement is still an accurate | >| reflection of NTAP's plans. Of course, ACLs for NT were necessary, | >| and given the nature of the next NFS standard it may become important | >| for them to implement Solaris ACLs as well. It will be interesting | >| to see if they can make NT and NFS ACLs interoperate - if anyone can, | >| I'm confident it will be Netapp. :) | > | >In the mean time it's a plus for Sun and a minus for Network Appliance. | >After many years of working with Auspex servers I have come to the | >conclusion that if you want NFS then Sun is your safest bet, if not | >always fastest or best performance. | | Well, I suppose if you want access to "new" features, such as NFS v3 | or ACLs, you're right - Sun tends to have them first before other | vendors. However, most places I'm familiar with would rather have | better performance and reliability and so on, and if that means not | having NFS ACLs, so be it.

I know that Net App filers and Auspexes are more reliable than Sun's however in practice the difference is minimal. I also know that they are faster but in practice it isn't so noticeable. We do everything we can to avoid NFS e.g. cachefs, and most of our users seem to be of the save and forget variety so we don't really need the performance either.

Price will probably dictate most which way we go in future and CIFS is a big incentive but on alternate wednesdays I still favour Sun's.

| In an odd way, since UNIX has generally done without ACLs for so long, | most places that I know of who could use them don't, since it's not | really necessary and it's not going to be interoperate well in a | heterogeneous environment. So I don't know of many customers who would | decide that they were going to rollout widespread ACL use and switch | all of their servers over to Sun to accomodate this.

I would definitely use ACL's if I could but 90% of our file storage is on machines that don't support them. I also like to use better security, same story.

/Michael