Q. Why does the home share have an icon to it as if it was a link and not a directory?
- The top-level directories act as a reparse point—essentially a shortcut. Consequently, administrators must create directories at the root of the share for optimal load balancing. Because it appears as a shortcut, we don’t allow user files in the root level of the share; we recommend setting permissions at the share or export root before deploying user folders. This step allows newly created top-level directories to inherit permissions, so you don’t have to adjust them after the fact using the Nutanix Files Microsoft Management Console (MMC) plug-in.
Q. Why is it necessary to empty directory prior to deleting the home share?
- Distributed share directories with NFSv4 introduce some unique behaviors. To balance performance across FSVMs, each top-level directory you create becomes an automatically generated export. Nutanix Files mounts the export on demand when the directory is accessed. Since these are exports, rather than standard directories, hence it takes a few steps to remove a top-level directory:
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Delete the contents of the share
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Unmount the share
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Delete the directory
TN-2041 Nutanix Files: Exports and Shares
Q. Why do I receive “Invalid device” error when creating a folder?
- The issue is due to the fact that Nutanix Files uses DFS namespace to provide shares to the Windows clients, meaning that the client will be connecting to the generic DFS namespace and not in particular the FSVM which serves the share i.e. holds the VG for the share. So if the client connects to an FSVM where it just holds the reparse point within the DFS namespace the rename operation will fail with an error of "Invalid device".
For a workaround please refer to KB-4187 Nutanix Files - Creating, Renaming, and Deleting Home Share Top Level Directories (TLDs)
Further reading:
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