Yesterday, Visuality Systems released the beta of their new NQ Storage stack, which brings Microsoft's SMB protocol to OEM storage arrays. This established company has been the main supplier of SMB support in the embedded device market for over a decade, but NQ Storage brings their technology to the enterprise. Eight well-known storage array companies have already licensed the … [Read more...] about Every Device Can Speak SMB Protocol Thanks To Visuality Systems
SMB 2.0
A Fairy Tale of Two Storage Protocols
Once Upon A Time... Once upon a time, a happy little storage protocol was born. She was loved by her father, Microsoft, and he asked her to work throughout their small kingdom, delivering packages from the castle to clients all around. Sometimes she would be given other odd jobs, like authenticating a visitor, but mostly she delivered files in the kingdom of LAN. Then one … [Read more...] about A Fairy Tale of Two Storage Protocols
Samba 4.0 is Released with Full Active Directory and Updated SMB Support
Yesterday, the Samba team released Samba 4.0, the culmination of almost a decade of work to create a full open source Active Directory server. Samba is the software that powers many Windows-compatible NAS devices, and the release of Samba 4.0 puts us all on a path toward SMB2 and SMB3 support! Introducing Samba Samba is an open source implementation of the Microsoft … [Read more...] about Samba 4.0 is Released with Full Active Directory and Updated SMB Support
Who Will Support SMB 3.0, and Which Features Will They Support?
I'm really thrilled about the improvements Microsoft is making to the core SMB protocol in Windows Server 2012. But it won't really matter if nobody but Microsoft supports the new protocol. So I like to call out to all the enterprise storage vendors: Let me hear your support for SMB3.0! What We Know so Far Obviously, Microsoft is going to support SMB 3.0 in a big way. … [Read more...] about Who Will Support SMB 3.0, and Which Features Will They Support?
Why You Should Never Again Utter The Word, “CIFS”
Let me put on my “grumpy old storage guy” hat for a moment: CIFS is not the network storage protocol used by Microsoft Windows, and many other clients. CIFS is dead, and has been for many years. The protocol used to share files over a LAN by the majority of personal computers is called SMB. I wish everyone in the industry would get that through their heads. Dear marketers: If … [Read more...] about Why You Should Never Again Utter The Word, “CIFS”