Need some guidance on this issue. My network consists of three laptops, two macs and one windows, and therefore this is not a uniform network as far as OS goes. The purpose of the NAS is primarily to hold music, movies and photos, and with only one person being admin (others read-only). The structure is NAS/Media/Music (Movies and Photos will be on the same level as Music)
From my reading and testing my understanding is that there are four "layers" where you get to choose essentially between Apple/Linux/Windows:
1. Service: I understand it as this is the overall accessability, e.g. if I do not enable the CIFS service, a windows computer will not see the FreeNAS device at all. Once I enabled CIFS my windows laptop could see it, but as everything else (dataset etc.) was configured for AFP/Apple, that was it. However, if I disable the AFP service, the macs are still able to access the NAS as I understand that they also can run over CIFS.
2. Sharing: This level has to do with a certain dataset or zvol and the choices are AFP/NFS/CIFS. It is here that the manual advices you to NOT use multiple share types for the same dataset/zvol.
3. Share type: Choices are Unix/Windows/Mac and only one is possible to select (manual 8.1.3)
4. Permission type: Choices are Unix/Apple/Windows and only one is possible to select. (manual 8.1.2)
My questions:
a. Service - given the set-up above it is recommended that I choose either CIFS or NFS (assuming windows will be able to access this type) in order to use only one service? Any preference between CIFS and NFS?
b. Sharing - If I share Media this will automatically share underlying zvols Music, Movies and Photos as well, correct?
c. Sharing - as the macs can use the CIFS is this the preferable choice then?
d. Share type - what difference does this choice make? (my impression is that the windows machines are more picky and people therefore use Windows in order to avoid problems)
e. Share type - what impact does it have if make inconsistent choices, e.g. CIFS under
Sharing and Mac under
Share type?
f. Permission type - same as in question d, what difference does this choice make?
Finally, I read this article on the future of AFP on macs
http://appleinsider.com/articles/13...fp-file-sharing-to-smb2-in-os-x-109-mavericks
so the question is
g. Should I just choose Windows/CIFS everywhere in order to be future proof?