Administrator Guide

• If the file is virus-free, the FluidFS cluster permits client access. The FluidFS cluster does not scan that file again, providing it remains
unmodified since the last check.
• If the file is infected, the FluidFS cluster denies client access. The client does not know that the file is infected. Therefore:
• A file access returns a system-specific file not found state for a missing file, depending on the client's computer.
• An access denial might be interpreted as a file permissions problem.
Figure 41. Antivirus Scanning
Only storage administrators can recover an uninfected version of the file, or access and process the infected file. To gain access to an
infected file, you must connect to the SMB share through another SMB share on which the antivirus service is disabled. Otherwise, the
FluidFS cluster recognizes the file as infected, and denies access. You can also access the file through an NFS export, because NFS does
not support antivirus scanning.
File transfers between the FluidFS cluster and the anti-virus server are not encrypted, so communication should be protected or
restricted.
Supported Antivirus Applications
For the latest list of supported antivirus applications, see the Dell Fluid File System Support Matrix.
Configuring Antivirus Scanning
To perform antivirus scanning, you must add an antivirus server and then enable antivirus scanning for each SMB share.
NOTE:
If any of the external services are configured with IPv6 link-local addresses, the monitor will always show these
services as Unavailable.
Managing Snapshots
Snapshots are read-only, point-in-time copies of NAS volume data. Storage administrators can restore a NAS volume from a snapshot if
needed. In addition, clients can easily retrieve files in a snapshot, without storage administrator intervention.
Snapshots use a redirect-on-write method to track NAS volume changes. That is, snapshots are based on a change set. When the first
snapshot of a NAS volume is created, all snapshots created after the baseline snapshot contain changes from the previous snapshot.
Various policies can be set for creating a snapshot, including when a snapshot is to be taken and how long to keep snapshots. For
example, mission-critical files with high churn rates might need to be backed up every 30 minutes, whereas archival shares might only
need to be backed up daily.
If you configure a NAS volume to use VM-consistent snapshots, each snapshot creation operation such as scheduled, manual, replication,
or NDMP automatically creates a snapshot on the VMware server. This feature enables you to restore the VMs to the state they were in
before the NAS volume snapshot was taken.
Because snapshots consume space on the NAS volume, ensure that you monitor available capacity on the NAS volume and schedule and
retain snapshots in a manner that ensures that the NAS volume always has sufficient free space available for both user data and
snapshots. Also, to be informed when snapshots are consuming significant NAS volume space, enable a snapshot consumption alert.
The FluidFS cluster automatically deletes one or more snapshots for a NAS volume in the following cases:
• If you delete a NAS volume, the FluidFS cluster deletes all of the snapshots for the NAS volume.
• If you restore a NAS volume from a snapshot, the FluidFS cluster deletes all the snapshots created after the snapshot from which you
restored the NAS volume.
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FluidFS Administration