Technical Report

NFS in NetApp ONTAP

Best practices and implementation guide
Justin Parisi, NetApp
July 2021 | TR-4067

Abstract
This document provides basic concepts, support information, configuration tips, and best
practices for NFS in NetApp® ONTAP®. This guide covers the latest available ONTAP versions
for currency and length. In most cases, the commands and best practices listed in this guide
apply to all ONTAP versions.
Results might vary in older ONTAP versions. Consult the product documentation for your
ONTAP version when necessary.
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Basic NFS concepts in NetApp ONTAP .................................................................................................... 7

Intended audience and assumptions .......................................................................................................................7

Stated support for NFS ............................................................................................................................................7

NFS features ...........................................................................................................................................................8

NFS server options ..................................................................................................................................................9

Namespace concepts ............................................................................................................................................11

File locking concepts .............................................................................................................................................20

Export concepts .....................................................................................................................................................23

The anon user .......................................................................................................................................................29

The root user .........................................................................................................................................................29

Limiting access to the SVM root volume ................................................................................................................30

Mapping all UIDs to a single UID (squash_all) ......................................................................................................32

Special character considerations ...........................................................................................................................33

NFS version considerations .................................................................................................................... 34

NFSv2 considerations ...........................................................................................................................................34

NFSv3 considerations ...........................................................................................................................................34

NFSv4.x considerations .........................................................................................................................................39

NFSv4.0 ................................................................................................................................................................42

NFSv4.1 ................................................................................................................................................................52

NFSv4.2 ................................................................................................................................................................56

Name services ........................................................................................................................................... 57

DNS 57

Identity management name services .....................................................................................................................58

Local files ..............................................................................................................................................................59

Multiprotocol NAS ..................................................................................................................................... 61

Qtrees ......................................................................................................................................................... 61
Qtrees and file moves............................................................................................................................................61

Qtree IDs and rename behavior ............................................................................................................................61

File handle effect for qtree exports ........................................................................................................................62

Mounting multiple Qtrees in the same volume on the same NFS client .................................................................62

Subdirectory exports..............................................................................................................................................63

User and group owners .........................................................................................................................................63

Nondisruptive operations with NFS ........................................................................................................ 63

2 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
 Replay/reply cache ................................................................................................................................................64

File locking.............................................................................................................................................................64

Impact of NFSv4.x locks on failover scenarios ......................................................................................................65

Difference between grace seconds and lease seconds .........................................................................................66

NFSv4.1 sessions..................................................................................................................................................66

What happens during LIF migrations in NFSv4.x? ................................................................................................66

LIF migrations with NFSv3.....................................................................................................................................66

Safely decommissioning data LIFs in use with NFS ..............................................................................................67

pNFS and LIF outages ..........................................................................................................................................68

Wdelay/No_wdelay ................................................................................................................................................68

Direct connect NFS ...............................................................................................................................................68

Choosing volume styles: FlexGroup or FlexVol? ................................................................................. 69

NFS auditing .............................................................................................................................................. 69

NFS audit setup .....................................................................................................................................................69

NFS best practices .................................................................................................................................... 70

General ONTAP best practices .............................................................................................................................70

ONTAP data LIF best practices with NFS environments .......................................................................................71

NFS security best practices ...................................................................................................................................75

Name services best practices ................................................................................................................................80

NFS client best practices .......................................................................................................................................80

Logging, monitoring, and statistics ........................................................................................................ 88

Advanced NFS concepts .......................................................................................................................... 93

Umask ...................................................................................................................................................................93

NFS user nfsnobody ..............................................................................................................................................94

NFSv4.x: nobody:nobody ......................................................................................................................................95

Hiding Snapshot copies .........................................................................................................................................97

Viewing and managing NFS credentials ................................................................................................................98

Using NFSv4.x ACLs with NFSv3 mounts ...........................................................................................................103

Commands to troubleshoot permission issues ....................................................................................................105

Dynamic NAS TCP autotuning ............................................................................................................................109

Exec context throttling .........................................................................................................................................109

Network connection concurrency and TCP slots: NFSv3 ....................................................................................111

NFSv4.x concurrency - session slots ...................................................................................................................122

NFSv4.x client IDs/NFS4ERR_CLID_INUSE ......................................................................................................124

3 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
 NFS silly renames ...............................................................................................................................................126

How ONTAP NFS handles atime updates ...........................................................................................................126

NAS flow control ..................................................................................................................................................127

Using FlexClone to quickly change all UIDs/GIDs in a volume ............................................................................127

Auxiliary GIDs – addressing the 16 GID limitation for NFS ..................................................................................127

High file count considerations ..............................................................................................................................129

NFS on nontraditional operating systems ........................................................................................... 129

NFS on Windows .................................................................................................................................................130

NFS using Apple OS ...........................................................................................................................................131

Appendix A .............................................................................................................................................. 132

Examples .............................................................................................................................................................132
Default NFS ports in ONTAP ...............................................................................................................................154

Where to find additional information .................................................................................................... 154

Request for comments (RFC) ..............................................................................................................................154

Technical reports .................................................................................................................................................154

Version history ........................................................................................................................................ 155

LIST OF TABLES
Table 1) NFS version support in ONTAP........................................................................................................................7
Table 2) NFS security support details. ...........................................................................................................................8
Table 3) NFS feature support. ........................................................................................................................................8
Table 4) Unsupported NFS features. ..............................................................................................................................9
Table 5) Export examples.............................................................................................................................................14
Table 6) NFSv3 mode bits versus NFSv4.x ACL granularity. .......................................................................................37
Table 7) NFSv4.x lock terminology. ..............................................................................................................................43
Table 8) NFS lease and grace periods. ........................................................................................................................49
Table 9) Referrals versus migration versus pNFS. .......................................................................................................51
Table 10) NFSv4.1 delegation benefits. .......................................................................................................................55
Table 11) Limits on local users and groups in ONTAP. ................................................................................................60
Table 12) Replay/reply cache NDO behavior. ..............................................................................................................64
Table 13) Lock state NDO behavior. ............................................................................................................................64
Table 14) UNIX Mode-bit levels....................................................................................................................................77
Table 15) Nconnect performance results......................................................................................................................86
Table 16) VM statistic masks........................................................................................................................................90
Table 17) NFS credential cache settings. ...................................................................................................................102

4 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Table 18) Exec contexts per node. .............................................................................................................................110
Table 19) Exec context throttle scale. ........................................................................................................................110
Table 20) Job comparisons - parallel dd with 65,536 and 128 RPC slots. .................................................................115
Table 21) Job comparisons - parallel dd with 65,536, 128, and 64 RPC slots............................................................116
Table 22) High file count creation (one million files) – NFSv3 – with and without nconnect – default slot tables. ......117
Table 23) High file count creation (one million files) – NFSv3 – with and without nconnect – 128 slot tables. ...........118
Table 24) High file count creation (one million files) – NFSv3 – with and without nconnect – 16 slot tables. .............118
Table 25) Total clients at maximum concurrent operations (128) before node exec context exhaustion. ..................118
Table 26) Total clients using 16 slot tables before node exec context exhaustion. ....................................................119
Table 27) Job comparisons - parallel dd – NFSv3 and NFSv4.1 with 65536 RPC slots. ............................................119
Table 28) One million files using f.write – NFSv3, 65536 slots – VM dirty bytes defaults versus tuned. ....................121
Table 29) 50x 500MB files using dd – NFSv3, 65536 slots – VM dirty bytes defaults versus tuned...........................122
Table 30) NFSv4.x session slot performance comparison. ........................................................................................123
Table 31) NFSv4.x session slot performance – Percent change versus 180 slots. ....................................................123
Table 32) NFSv4.1/pNFS/nconnect vs. NFSv3 – sequential reads. ...........................................................................149
Table 33) High file count test results – one million files. .............................................................................................151
Table 34) High file count test results – one million files – average CPU busy % and average latency. ......................151
Table 35) Low file count test results – 2GB files.........................................................................................................152
Table 36) Low file count test results – Average CPU busy % and average latency. ..................................................152
Table 37) NFS Kerberos results. ................................................................................................................................153
Table 38) NFS Kerberos – Performance comparison versus nonencrypted baseline. ...............................................154
Table 39) Default NFS Ports in ONTAP. ....................................................................................................................154

LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1) Cluster namespace. ......................................................................................................................................12
Figure 2) Load-sharing mirror protection of vsroot volumes. ........................................................................................13
Figure 3) Symlink example using vsroot. ......................................................................................................................18
Figure 4) NetApp FlexGroup volumes. .........................................................................................................................19
Figure 5) NetApp FlexCache volumes. .........................................................................................................................20
Figure 6) Qtree export specification – ONTAP System Manager. ................................................................................24
Figure 7) Reordering the rule index in ONTAP System Manager. ................................................................................25
Figure 8) pNFS data workflow. .....................................................................................................................................54
Figure 9) Gratuitous ARP during LIF migration. ...........................................................................................................67
Figure 10) Example of setting NFSv4 audit ACE..........................................................................................................70
Figure 11) Single LIF NAS interaction. .........................................................................................................................71
Figure 12) Multiple LIFs NAS interaction. .....................................................................................................................72
Figure 13) Default actimeo latency - vdbench. .............................................................................................................84
Figure 14) Actimeo=600 latency - vdbench. .................................................................................................................84
Figure 15) Actimeo=600, nocto latency - vdbench. ......................................................................................................85

5 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Figure 16) NFS mounts with and without nconnect ......................................................................................................86
Figure 17) Filtering events in ONTAP System Manager UI. .........................................................................................89
Figure 18) Viewing NFS client to volume mappings in ONTAP System Manager ........................................................93
Figure 19) Impact of RPC slot tables on NFSv3 performance. ...................................................................................114
Figure 20) Parallel dd performance – NFSv3 and RPC slot tables; 1MB rsize/wsize. ................................................115
Figure 21) Parallel dd performance – NFSv3 and RPC slot tables; 256K rsize/wsize. ...............................................115
Figure 22) RPC packet with 16 GIDs. ........................................................................................................................128

6 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Basic NFS concepts in NetApp ONTAP
Intended audience and assumptions
This technical report is for storage administrators, system administrators, and data center managers. It
assumes basic familiarity with the following:
• The NetApp ONTAP data management software
• Network file sharing protocols (NFS in particular)
This document contains some advanced and diag-level commands. Exercise caution when using these
commands. If there are questions or concerns about using these commands, contact NetApp Support for
assistance.

Stated support for NFS

The following section covers the stated support for NFS versions and client support with Data ONTAP.

NFS version support

Table 1 shows the NFS version support in ONTAP and the supported ONTAP release for the protocol.

Table 1) NFS version support in ONTAP.

NFS version Supported ONTAP version
NFSv2 ONTAP 8.2 and earlier
NFSv3 Supported in all ONTAP releases
NFSv4.0 ONTAP 8.1 and later
NFSv4.1 (with pNFS) ONTAP 8.1 and later
NFSv4.2 ONTAP 9.8 (basic protocol support)
ONTAP 9.9 (labeled NFS)

NFS client support

NFSv3 clients will not appear in the Interoperability Matrix (IMT), as ONTAP supports all NFS clients that
comply with the standards defined in Request For Comments (RFC) documentation that is ratified by the
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Client support for NFSv4.x is also dependent on the stated client
support for each vendor. We do show NFSv4.1 client support in the IMT.
The NetApp IMT can be found here.
These are the most recent RFCs for each supported NFS version in ONTAP:
• RFC-1813: NFSv3
• RFC-7530: NFSv4.0
• RFC-5661: NFSv4.1
• RFC-7862: NFS4.2

Windows NFS support

Starting in ONTAP 8.2.3 and 8.3.1, support for NFS using Windows clients was added. Windows NFS
does not comply with RFC standards, so some extra considerations need to be made to use it. For
details, see the section called “NFS on Windows.”

7 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
NFS security support
Table 2 illustrates the supported security methods for securing NFS, both at-rest and in-transit. For more
information about specific security features in ONTAP, see TR-4569: Security Hardening Guide for
NetApp ONTAP.
• At-rest security refers to security for data that is in-place.
• In-flight security refers to security for data that is being transmitted across the network.

Table 2) NFS security support details.

Supported at-rest security for NFS Supported in-flight security for NFS
• NetApp Volume Encryption (NVE) • Kerberos (krb5, krb5i, krb5p)
• NetApp Aggregate Encryption (NAE) − Supported encryption types include:
• Self-encrypting Drives (SED) AES-256, AES-128, 3DES, DES
• NetApp Storage Encryption Drives (NSE)
• Export Policies and Rules
• Access control lists (ACLs)
• Identity management (users, groups, file
ownership)

Note: NFS over SSH and NFS over stunnel are not supported with ONTAP.

NFS features
Each NFS version adds new features to the protocol to enhance operations, performance and business
use cases. The following table shows the supported NFS features in ONTAP, along with the associated
NFS version information for that feature.

Table 3) NFS feature support.

NFS version Features available
All versions • Volume and qtree level export rules
• 1,024 maximum auxiliary GIDs for NFS operations
• 64-bit file IDs
• Ability to junction volumes across a namespace to create pseudo-filesystems
• UNIX-style mode bit permissions (rwx)
• TCP and UDP (NFSv4.x is TCP only)
• Changing ports
• Limiting port range between 1-1024 (mount-rootonly, nfs-rootonly)
• FSID changes across file systems
• Showmount (see the “Showmount” section for information and limitations)
• NFS client to volume mapping
• Multiprotocol NAS access (CIFS/SMB and NFS)
• Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)/ Network Information Service (NIS) for
UNIX Identity mapping
• Netgroups
• Windows NFS
NFSv3 • All RFC standard features for NFSv3 are supported
NFSv4.0/4.1 • ACLs (up to 1,024)
• Delegations
• Migrations

8 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
 NFS version Features available
• Referrals
• Lease timeout configuration
• pNFS (v4.1)
NFSv4.2 • Basic protocol support in ONTAP 9.8
• Labeled NFS (ONTAP 9.9)

The following table shows features that are currently unsupported for NFS.

Table 4) Unsupported NFS features.

NFS version Unsupported features
All versions • POSIX ACLs
• Subdirectory exports
• SSSD Dynamic UIDs
NFSv3 • Extended attributes (not in RFC spec)
NFSv4.0/4.1 • Session trunking/multipath
NFSv4.2 • No supported features; protocol support only

NFS server options

NFS servers in ONTAP are configurable via server options. By default, the options are configured with
best practices in mind and should not require specific modification. However, in some cases (such as
enabling NFSv4.x support), the NFS options will need to be changed.
These default values, as well as all of the available NFS options and descriptions, are covered in the man
pages for your version of ONTAP or by running man nfs modify from the CLI.

The rootonly options – nfsrootonly and mountrootonly

The rootonly options are added to avoid untrusted client access. Untrusted clients (those not part of
the export rules) can potentially access data by using SSH tunneling to trusted clients. However, those
requests would come from untrusted ports (ports greater than 1,024). This can provide a back door for
clients not intended to have access.
Therefore, the enabling or disabling of the rootonly options hinges upon need. Does the environment
require more ports to allow NFS to function properly? Or is it more important to prevent untrusted clients
from accessing mounts?
One potential compromise is to make use of NFSv4.x and/or Kerberos authentication for a higher level of
secured access to NFS exports. TR-4616: NFS Kerberos in ONTAP covers how to use NFS Kerberos.
In these scenarios, using the mount-rootonly and/or nfs-rootonly options can alleviate these
issues.
To check port usage on the client, run the following command:
# netstat -na | grep [IP address]

To check port usage on the cluster, run the following command:

cluster::> network connections active show -node [nodename] -vserver [vservername] -service nfs*

9 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Showmount
Data ONTAP earlier than 8.3 does not support the showmount command from NFS clients to expose
export paths. This limitation was by design, due to performance considerations. ONTAP clusters can
potentially have thousands of export rules, so a query for all exports can be process intensive.
Additionally, exports are not in flat files and are applied to volumes as rules, so the export path and export
rules would live in two different places.
Example of showmount –e from client with showmount disabled in ONTAP:
[root@nfsclient /]# showmount -e x.x.x.a
Export list for x.x.x.a:
/ (everyone)

The SVM has a vsroot volume mounted to /, which is the volume returned in the showmount query. All
other volumes are mounted below that mount point and are not returned to the client when the
showmount NFS option is disabled.

What happens during a Showmount query?

Showmount leverages the MOUNT protocol in NFSv3 to issue an EXPORT query to the NFS server. If
the mount port is not listening or blocked by a firewall, or if NFSv3 is disabled on the NFS server,
showmount queries fail:
# showmount -e x.x.x.a
mount clntudp_create: RPC: Program not registered

The following shows output from a packet trace of the showmount command being run against a data LIF
in Data ONTAP with the option disabled:
x.x.x.x x.x.x.a MOUNT 170 V3 EXPORT Call (Reply In 17)
Mount Service
Program Version: 3
V3 Procedure: EXPORT (5)

x.x.x.a x.x.x.x MOUNT 202 V3 EXPORT Reply (Call In 16)

Mount Service
Export List Entry: /unix ->

Note: The trace shows that the server returns /unix ->. However, this export path has a specific
client in the rule set:
cluster::> vol show -vserver NFS83 -junction-path /unix -fields policy
(volume show)
vserver volume policy
------- ------ --------
NFS83 unix restrict

cluster::> export-policy rule show -vserver NFS83 -policyname restrict

Policy Rule Access Client RO
Vserver Name Index Protocol Match Rule
------------ --------------- ------ -------- --------------------- ---------
NFS83 restrict 1 any x.x.x.y any

If client match is required in the showmount functionality, the showmount utility in the toolchest provides
that functionality.

Showmount in data ONTAP 8.3 and later

The showmount functionality is required for some applications to work properly, such as Oracle OVM, so
showmount support was added in Data ONTAP 8.3 and later to properly support those applications.
This functionality is disabled by default. It can be enabled with the following command:

10 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
cluster::> nfs server modify -vserver NFS -showmount
enabled disabled

Note: To use showmount in Data ONTAP, the parent volume (including vsroot, or /) needs to allow read
or traverse access to the client/user attempting to run showmount and vsroot (/) should use UNIX
security style.
After this functionality is enabled, clients can query data LIFs for export paths. However, the clientmatch
(access from clients, netgroups, and so on) information is not available. Instead, each path reflects
everyone as having access, even if clients are specified in export policy rule sets.
Sample output of showmount in clustered Data ONTAP 8.3 and later:
# showmount -e x.x.x.a
Export list for x.x.x.a:
/unix (everyone)
/unix/unix1 (everyone)
/unix/unix2 (everyone)
/ (everyone)

Note: If using Windows NFS, showmount should be enabled to prevent issues with renaming files and
folders.

Showmount caching
When showmount is run from a client, it requests information from the NFS server on the cluster.
Because export lists can be large, the cluster maintains a cache of this information to reduce the number
of requests made to the NFS server.
When a volume is unmounted from the cluster namespace (see “The cluster namespace”) using the
volume unmount command or from ONTAP System Manager, the cache does not update, so the
exported path remains in cache until it expires or is flushed.
To flush the showmount cache:
cluster::> export-policy cache flush -vserver SVM -cache showmount

The cache only flushes on the node you are logged in to. For example, if you are logged in to node1’s
management LIF, then the cache on node1 flushes. This means that only clients connecting to data LIFs
local to node1 benefit from the cache flush. To flush the cache on other nodes, log into the node
management LIF on those nodes. The node that is flushing is displayed when running the command.
cluster::> export-policy cache flush -vserver SVM -cache showmount

Warning: You are about to flush the "showmount" cache for Vserver "SVM" on node "node1", which
will result in increased traffic to the name servers. Do you want to proceed with flushing the
cache? {y|n}: y

Namespace concepts
This section covers the concept of a “namespace” in NFS environments and how ONTAP offers multiple
solutions for providing a global namespace for NFS clients.

The cluster namespace

A namespace in ONTAP is a collection of file systems hosted across different nodes in the cluster to
provide scalable performance and capacity. Each SVM has a file namespace that consists of a single root
volume. This namespace starts at the location of “/”. Subsequent volumes and qtrees all traverse “/” and
have their export paths defined by the volume option -junction-path. The SVM namespace can
consist of one or more volumes linked by means of junctions that connect from a named junction inode in
one volume to the root directory of another volume. A cluster can have more than one SVM, but each

11 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
SVM only has one vsroot and one “/,” which results in each SVM having a unique set of file system IDs.
This prevents volumes in different SVMs from sharing file system IDs/file handles and avoids issues
mounting NFS exports in multitenant environments.
All the volumes belonging to the SVM are linked into the global namespace in that cluster using the “/”
export path. The cluster namespace is mounted at a single point in the cluster. The top directory of the
cluster namespace within a cluster (“/”) is a synthetic directory containing entries for the root directory of
each SVM namespace in the cluster. The volumes in a namespace can be NetApp FlexVol® volumes or
NetApp FlexGroup volumes.

Figure 1) Cluster namespace.

Protecting your namespace

A vsroot volume will live only on a single node in a cluster, even though the SVM is accessible through
multiple nodes. Since the vsroot is how NFS clients traverse the namespace, it is vital to NFS operations.
cluster::> vol offline -vserver NFS -volume vsroot

Warning: Offlining root volume vsroot of Vserver NFS will make all volumes on that Vserver
inaccessible.
Do you want to continue? {y|n}: y
Volume "NFS:vsroot" is now offline.

If the vsroot volume is somehow unavailable, then NFS clients will issues whenever the vsroot volume is
needed to traverse the filesystem.
This includes (but might not be limited to) the following behaviors:
• Mount requests will hang.
• If / is mounted, traversal from / to another volume, running ls, etc. will hang.
• Umount operations may fail because the mount is busy, even when the volume is back online.
• If a volume is already mounted below “/” (such as /vol1), then reads/writes/listings will still succeed.
Load-sharing mirrors in ONTAP is a way to leverage the ONTAP SnapMirror capability to increase vsroot
resiliency.

12 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Note: Load-sharing mirrors are supported only with vsroot volumes. To share load across data
volumes, consider using NetApp FlexCache volumes instead.
When load-sharing mirrors are available for the vsroot volume, NFSv3 operations are able to leverage the
load-sharing mirror destination volumes to traverse the file system. When load-sharing mirrors are in use,
it is possible to access the source volume through the .admin folder within the NFS mount.
For more information, see Creating and initializing load-sharing mirror relationships.
NetApp highly recommends creating load-sharing mirror relationships for vsroot volumes in NFSv3
environments.
Note: NFSv4.x clients are unable to use load-sharing mirror volumes to traverse file systems due to the
nature of the NFSv4.x protocol.
Figure 2 shows how load-sharing mirrors can provide access to “/” in the event the vsroot is unavailable.

Figure 2) Load-sharing mirror protection of vsroot volumes.

To create a load-sharing mirror for the vsroot volume, complete the following tasks:
• Typically, the vsroot volume is 1GB in size. Verify the vsroot volume size prior to creating new
volumes and ensure the new volumes are all the same size.
• Create a destination volume to mirror the vsroot on each node in the cluster. For example, in a four-
node cluster, create four new volumes with the -type DP.
• Create a new SnapMirror relationship from the vsroot source to each new DP volume you created.
Specify a schedule for updates depending on the change rate of your namespace root. For example,
hourly if you create new volumes regularly; daily if you do not.
• Initialize SnapMirror by using the initialize-ls-set command.

Pseudo file systems

The ONTAP architecture makes it possible to have a true pseudo-file system, which complies with the
RFC 7530 NFSv4 standards.
Servers that limit NFS access to "shares" or "exported" file systems should provide a pseudo-file
system into which the exported file systems can be integrated, so that clients can browse the
server's namespace. The clients' view of a pseudo-file system will be limited to paths that lead
to exported file systems.

And in section 7.3:

13 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
NFSv4 servers avoid this namespace inconsistency by presenting all the exports within the
framework of a single-server namespace. An NFSv4 client uses LOOKUP and READDIR operations to
browse seamlessly from one export to another. Portions of the server namespace that are not
exported are bridged via a "pseudo-file system" that provides a view of exported directories
only. A pseudo-file system has a unique fsid and behaves like a normal, read-only file system.

Data ONTAP has removed the /vol requirement for exported volumes seen in ONTAP operating in 7-
Mode and instead uses a more standardized approach to the pseudo-file system. Because of this, you
can now seamlessly integrate an existing NFS infrastructure with NetApp storage because “/” is truly “/”
and not a redirector to /vol/vol0, as it was in 7-Mode.
A pseudo-file system applies only in Data ONTAP if the permissions flow from more restrictive to less
restrictive. For example, if the vsroot (mounted to /) has more restrictive permissions than a data volume
(such as /volname) does, then pseudo-file system concepts apply.
Having a pseudo-file system allows storage administrators to create their own file system namespaces, if
they desire, by way of mounting volumes to other volumes using junction paths. This concept is illustrated
in Figure 1) Cluster namespace..

Pseudo file system and -actual support

The use of -actual as an export option is supported only in NetApp ONTAP 7-Mode and not supported in
ONTAP. The -actual option is used in cases where storage administrators wish to mask export paths and
redirect to shorter names.
For example, if a storage administrator has a path of /dept1/folder1, then they may want to export
that path as /folder1.

Working around lack of -actual support

In most cases, the -actual export option is not necessary in ONTAP. The design of the operating
system allows natural pseudo file systems rather than those defined in export files. Everything is mounted
beneath the SVM root volume, which is mounted to /. Exports can be set at the volume or qtree level,
can be junctioned several levels deep, and can have names that do not reflect the actual volume names.

Table 5) Export examples.

Export path Exported object
/vol1 Volume named vol1
/NFSvol Volume named vol2
/vol1/NFSvol Volume named vol2 junctioned to volume named vol1
/vol1/qtree Qtree named qtree with parent volume named vol1
/vol1/NFSvol/qtree1 Qtree named qtree1 with parent volume named NFSvol
junctioned to volume named vol1

One use case for -actual that is not inherently covered by the Data ONTAP NFS architecture is -
actual for qtrees or folders. For instance, if a storage administrator wants to export a qtree or folder to a
path such as /folder1, there is no way to do this natively using the NFS exports in the SVM. The path
is instead /volume/folder1.
Sample export from 7-Mode:
/qtree –actual=/vol/vol1/qtree,rw,sec=sys

In ONTAP, the path for a qtree that NFS clients mount is the same path as the qtree is mounted to in the
namespace. If this is not desirable, then the workaround is to leverage symlinks to mask the path to the
qtree.

14 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
What is a symlink?
Symlink is an abbreviation for symbolic link. A symbolic link is a special type of file that contains a
reference to another file or directory in the form of an absolute or relative path. Symbolic links operate
transparently to clients and act as actual paths to data.

Relative paths versus absolute paths

Symlinks can leverage either relative or absolute paths. Absolute paths are paths that point to the same
location on one file system regardless of the present working directory or combined paths. Relative paths
are paths relative to the working directory.
For example, if a user is inside a directory at /directory and wants to go to /directory/user, that user can
use a relative path:
# cd user/
# pwd
/directory/user

Or the user can use the absolute path:

# cd /directory/user
# pwd
/directory/user

When mounting a folder using NFS, it is better to use a relative path with symlinks, because there is no
guarantee that every user mounts to the same mount point on every client. With relative paths, symlinks
can be created that work regardless of what the absolute path is.

Using symlinks to simulate –actual support

In ONTAP, symbolic links can be used to simulate the same behavior that the export option -actual
provided in 7-Mode.
For example, if a qtree exists in the cluster, the path can look like this:
cluster::> qtree show -vserver flexvol -volume unix2 -qtree nfstree

Vserver Name: flexvol

Volume Name: unix2
Qtree Name: nfstree
Qtree Path: /vol/unix2/nfstree
Security Style: unix
Oplock Mode: enable
Unix Permissions: ---rwxr-xr-x
Qtree Id: 1
Qtree Status: normal
Export Policy: volume
Is Export Policy Inherited: true

The parent volume is unix2 (/unix/unix2), which is mounted to volume unix (/unix), which is
mounted to vsroot (/).
cluster::> vol show -vserver flexvol -volume unix2 -fields junction-path
(volume show)
vserver volume junction-path
------- ------ -------------
flexvol unix2 /unix/unix2

The exported path would be /parent_volume_path/qtree, rather than the

/vol/parent_volume_path/qtree seen earlier. The following is the output from a showmount -e
command from an NFS client:
/unix/unix2/nfstree (everyone)

15 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Some storage administrators might not want to expose the entire path of /unix/unix2/nfstree,
because it can allow clients to attempt to navigate other portions of the path. To allow the masking of that
path to an NFS client, a symlink volume or folder can be created and mounted to a junction path. For
example:
cluster::> vol create -vserver flexvol -volume symlinks -aggregate aggr1 -size 20m -state online
-security-style unix -junction-path /NFS_links

The volume size can be small (minimum of 20MB), but that depends on the number of symlinks in the
volume. Each symlink is 4k in size, so you may need to create larger volume sizes to accommodate the
number of symlinks. Alternatively, create a folder under vsroot for the symlinks.
After the volume or folder is created, mount the vsroot to an NFS client to create the symlink.
# mount -o nfsvers=3 x.x.x.e:/ /symlink
# mount | grep symlink
x.x.x.e:/ on /symlink type nfs (rw,nfsvers=3,addr=x.x.x.e)

Note: If using a directory under vsroot, mount vsroot and create the directory.
# mount -o nfsvers=3 x.x.x.e:/ /symlink
# mount | grep symlink
x.x.x.e:/ on /symlink type nfs (rw,nfsvers=3,addr=x.x.x.e)
# mkdir /symlink/symlinks
# ls -la /symlink | grep symlinks
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 4096 Apr 30 10:45 symlinks

To create a symlink to the qtree, use the -s option (s = symbolic). The link path needs to include a
relative path that directs the symlink to the correct location without needing to specify the exact path. If
the link is inside a folder that does not navigate to the desired path, then ../ needs to be added to the
path.
For example, if a folder named NFS_links is created under / and the volume unix is also mounted under
/, then navigating to /NFS_links and creating a symlink cause the relative path to require a redirect to
the parent folder.
Example of a symlink created in a symlink volume mounted to /NFS_links:
# mount -o nfsvers=3 x.x.x.e:/ /symlink/
# mount | grep symlink
x.x.x.e:/ on /symlink type nfs (rw,nfsvers=3,addr=x.x.x.e)
# cd /symlink/NFS_links
# pwd
/symlink/NFS_links
# ln -s ../unix/unix2/nfstree LINK
# ls -la /symlink/unix/unix2/nfstree/
total 8
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 4096 May 15 14:34 .
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Apr 29 16:47 ..
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 0 May 15 14:34 you_are_here
# cd LINK
# ls -la
total 8
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 4096 May 15 14:34 .
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Apr 29 16:47 ..
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 0 May 15 14:34 you_are_here
# pwd
/symlink/NFS_links/LINK

Note: Despite the fact that the symlink points to the actual path of /unix/unix2/nfstree, pwd
returns the path of the symlink, which is /symlink/NFS_links/LINK. The file you_are_here
has the same date and timestamp across both paths.
Because the path includes ../, this symlink cannot be directly mounted.
Example of symlink created in vsroot:

16 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
# mount -o nfsvers=3 x.x.x.e:/ /symlink/
# mount | grep symlink
x.x.x.e:/ on /symlink type nfs (rw,nfsvers=3,addr=x.x.x.e)
# cd /symlink/
# pwd
/symlink
# ln -s unix/unix2/nfstree LINK1
# ls -la /symlink/unix/unix2/nfstree/
total 8
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 4096 May 15 14:34 .
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Apr 29 16:47 ..
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 0 May 15 14:34 you_are_here
# cd LINK1
# ls -la
total 8
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 4096 May 15 14:34 .
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Apr 29 16:47 ..
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 0 May 15 14:34 you_are_here
# pwd
/symlink/LINK1

Again, despite the fact that the actual path is /unix/unix2/nfstree, we see an ambiguated path of
/symlink/LINK1. The file you_are_here has the same date and timestamp across both paths.
Additionally, the symlink created can be mounted instead of the vsroot path, adding an extra level of
ambiguity to the export path:
# mount -o nfsvers=3 x.x.x.e:/LINK1 /mnt
# mount | grep mnt
x.x.x.e:/LINK1 on /mnt type nfs (rw,nfsvers=3,addr=x.x.x.e
# cd /mnt
# pwd
/mnt

One use case for this setup is with automounters. Every client can mount the same path and never
actually know where in the directory structure they are. If clients mount the SVM root volume
(/), be sure to lock down the volume to nonadministrative clients.
For more information about locking down volumes to prevent listing of files and folders, see the section in
this document called “Limiting access to the SVM root volume.”
Figure 3 shows a sample of how a namespace can be created to leverage symlinks to create ambiguation
of paths for NAS operations.

17 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Figure 3) Symlink example using vsroot.

Note: Export policies and rules can be applied to volumes and qtrees, but not folders or symlinks. This
fact should be taken into consideration when creating symlinks for use as mount points. Symlinks
instead inherit the export policy rules of the parent volume in which the symlink resides.

NetApp FlexGroup volumes

Beginning in ONTAP 9.1, a new way to present storage to NAS (CIFS/SMB and NFS) clients was
introduced: NetApp FlexGroup volumes.
A FlexGroup volume is intended to provide the following benefits:
• Immense capacity for a single mount point (up to 20PB, 400 billion files)
• Performance gains over FlexVol by way of concurrency of ingest operations
• Ease of deployment and management
A NetApp FlexGroup volume provides NFS clients with a true global namespace – a single large bucket
of storage that spans multiple nodes in a cluster and provides parallel metadata operations for NAS
workloads.

18 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Figure 4) NetApp FlexGroup volumes.

Ideal use cases

A FlexGroup volume works best with workloads that are heavy on ingest (a high level of new data
creation), heavily concurrent, and evenly distributed among subdirectories:
• Electronic design automation (EDA)
• Log file repositories
• Software build/test environments (such as GIT)
• Seismic/oil and gas
• Media assets or HIPAA archives
• File streaming workflows
• Unstructured NAS data (such as home directories)
• Big data/data science
• Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
• Home directories
For more information about FlexGroup volumes, see the following resources:
• TR-4571: NetApp FlexGroup Volume Best Practices and Implementation Guide
• TR-4571-a: Top Best Practices – NetApp ONTAP FlexGroup Volumes
• TR-4617: Electronic Design Automation Best Practices
• TR-4678: Data Protection and Backup – NetApp ONTAP FlexGroup Volumes

NetApp FlexCache volumes

ONTAP 9.5 introduced a new feature for balancing read-heavy NFS workloads across multiple nodes
called NetApp FlexCache volumes.
FlexCache in ONTAP provides a writable, persistent cache of a volume in a remote place. A cache is a
temporary storage location that resides between a host and a source of data. The objective of a cache is
to store frequently accessed portions of source data in a way that allows the data to be served faster than
it would be by fetching the data from the source. Caches are beneficial in read-intensive environments
where data is accessed more than once and is shared by multiple hosts. A cache can serve data faster in
one of two ways:

19 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
• The cache system is faster than the system with the data source. This can be achieved through faster
storage in the cache (for example, solid-state drives (SSD) versus HDD), increased processing power
in the cache, and increased (or faster) memory in the cache.
• The storage space for the cache is physically closer to the host, so it does not take as long to reach
the data.
Caches are implemented with different architectures, policies, and semantics so that the integrity of the
data is protected as it is stored in the cache and served to the host.
FlexCache offers the following benefits:
• Improved performance by providing load distribution
• Reduced latency by locating data closer to the point of client access
• Enhanced availability by serving cached data in a network disconnection situation
FlexCache provides all of the above advantages while maintaining cache coherency, data consistency,
and efficient use of storage in a scalable and high-performing manner.

Figure 5) NetApp FlexCache volumes.

A FlexCache is a sparse copy; not all files from the origin dataset can be cached, and, even then, not all
data blocks of a cached inode can be present in the cache. Storage is used efficiently by prioritizing
retention of the working dataset (recently used data).
With FlexCache, the management of disaster recovery and other corporate data strategies only needs to
be implemented at the origin. Because data management is only on the source, FlexCache enables
better and more efficient use of resources and simpler data management and disaster recovery
strategies.
For more information on FlexGroup volumes, see the following resource:
• TR-4743: FlexCache in ONTAP

File locking concepts

File locking is a way that applications can preserve the integrity of a file when it is open and in use by
notifying other clients that attempt to open the file that it is currently locked. With NFS, file locking
mechanisms depend on the NFS version being used.

20 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
NFSv3 locking
NFSv3 uses ancillary protocols like Network Lock Manager (NLM) and Network Status Monitor (NSM) to
coordinate file locks between the NFS client and server. NLM helps establish and release locks, while
NSM notifies peers of server reboots. With NFSv3 locking, when a client reboots, the server has to
release the locks. When a server reboots, the client reminds the server of the locks it held. In some
cases, the lock mechanisms don’t communicate properly and stale locks get leftover on the server and
must be manually cleared.

NFSv4.x locking
NFSv4.x uses a lease-based locking model that is integrated within the NFS protocol. This means there
are no ancillary services to maintain or worry about; all the locking is encapsulated in the NFSv4.x
communication.
When a server or client reboots, if the lock cannot be re-established during a specified grace period, then
the lock will expire. ONTAP NFS servers control this lock timeout period with the options -v4-grace-
seconds and -v4-lease-seconds.
• -v4-lease-seconds refers to how long a lease is granted before the client has to renew the lease.
The default is 30 seconds, with a minimum of 10 seconds and maximum of -1 second of the value of
-v4-grace-seconds.
• -v4-grace-seconds refers to how long a client attempts to reclaim a lock from ONTAP during a
reboot of a node (such as during failovers/givebacks). The default is 45 seconds and can be modified
with a range of +1 second of the -v4-lease-seconds value and a maximum of 90 seconds.
In rare cases, locks may not be freed as quickly as stated by the lease seconds value, which results in
the locks being freed over the course of two lease periods. For example, if grace seconds is set to 45
seconds, it may take 90 seconds to free the lock. For more information, see bug 957529. For information
about the impact of these values to storage failovers, see “Impact of NFSv4.x locks on failover.”

Multiprotocol NAS lock behavior

When using file locks in multiprotocol NAS environments, you should be aware of a difference in behavior
depending on the NAS protocol in use.
• If the NAS client is SMB, file locks are mandatory locks.
• If the NAS client is NFS, file locks are advisory locks.

What this means

Because of differences between the NFS and SMB file locks, an NFS client might fail to access a file
previously opened by an SMB application.
The following occurs when an NFS client attempts to access a file locked by an SMB application:
• In mixed or NTFS volumes, file manipulation operations such as rm, rmdir, and mv can cause the
NFS application to fail.
• NFS read and write operations are denied by SMB deny-read and deny-write open modes,
respectively.
• NFS write operations fail when the written range of the file is locked with an exclusive SMB bytelock.
In UNIX security-style volumes, NFS unlink and rename operations ignore the SMB lock state and
allow access to the file. All other NFS operations on UNIX security-style volumes honor the SMB lock
state.
For more information on multiprotocol NAS, see the section “Multiprotocol NAS.”

21 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Lock types
There are several types of NFS locks, which include:
• Shared locks. Shared locks can be used by multiple processes at the same time and can only be
issued if there are no exclusive locks on a file. These are intended for read-only work, but can be
used for writes (such as with a database).
• Exclusive locks. These operate the same as exclusive locks in CIFS/SMB – only one process can
use the file when there is an exclusive lock. If any other processes have locked the file, an exclusive
lock cannot be issued, unless that process was forked.
• Delegations. Delegations are used only with NFSv4.x and are assigned when the NFS server
options are enabled and the client supports NFSv4.x delegations. Delegations provide a way to cache
operations on the client side by creating a “soft” lock to the file being used by a client. This helps
improve some aspects of performance for operations by reducing the number of calls being made
between the client and server and are similar to SMB opportunistic locks. For more information about
delegations, see “NFSv4.1 delegations.”
• Byte-range locks. Rather than locking an entire file, byte-range locks only lock a portion of a file.
Note: Locking behavior is dependent on the type of lock, the client operating system version and
the NFS version being used. Be sure to test locking in your environment to gauge the
expected behavior.
For more information about file locking in ONTAP, see the product documentation section called
“Managing file locks.”

Manually establishing locks on a client

To test NFS locks, the client has to tell the NFS server to establish a lock. However, not all applications
use locks. For example, an application like “vi” will not lock a file; instead, it creates a hidden swap file in
the same folder and then commits writes to that file when the application is closed. Then the old file is
deleted and the swap file gets renamed to the filename.
There are utilities to manually establish locks, however. For example, flock can lock files.
1. To establish a lock on a file, first run exec to assign a numeric ID.
# exec 4<>v4user_file

2. Use flock to create a shared or exclusive lock on the file.

# flock

Usage:
flock [options] <file|directory> <command> [command args]
flock [options] <file|directory> -c <command>
flock [options] <file descriptor number>

Options:
-s --shared get a shared lock
-x --exclusive get an exclusive lock (default)
-u --unlock remove a lock
-n --nonblock fail rather than wait
-w --timeout <secs> wait for a limited amount of time
-E --conflict-exit-code <number> exit code after conflict or timeout
-o --close close file descriptor before running command
-c --command <command> run a single command string through the shell

-h, --help display this help and exit

-V, --version output version information and exit

# flock -n 4

3. Check the ONTAP SVM for the lock.

22 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
cluster::*> vserver locks show -vserver DEMO

Notice: Using this command can impact system performance. It is recommended

that you specify both the vserver and the volume when issuing this command to
minimize the scope of the command's operation. To abort the command, press Ctrl-C.

Vserver: DEMO
Volume Object Path LIF Protocol Lock Type Client
-------- ------------------------- ----------- --------- ----------- ----------
home /home/v4user_file data2 nlm byte-range 10.x.x.x
Bytelock Offset(Length): 0 (18446744073709551615)

4. Unlock the file.

# flock -u -n 4

Note: Manually locking files allows you to test file open and edit interactions, as well as seeing how
file locks handle storage failover events.

Export concepts
Volumes in Data ONTAP are shared out to NFS clients by exporting a path that is accessible to a client or
set of clients. When a volume is mounted to the SVM’s namespace, a file handle is created and
presented to NFS clients when requested in a mount command. Permissions to these exports are defined
by export policies and rules, which are configurable by storage administrators.

Export policy and rule concepts

Data ONTAP offers export policies as containers for export policy rules to control security. These policies
are stored in a replicated database, thus making exports available across every node in the cluster, rather
than isolated to a single node.
To provide or restrict NFS access to these volumes, export policy rules are created. These rules can
define read, write and root access, as well as specifying client lists. Multiple rules can exist in a policy and
multiple clients can exist in a single rule.

The default export policy

A newly created SVM contains an export policy called Default. This export policy cannot be deleted,
although it can be renamed or modified. When an NFS server is created, the Default policy is
automatically created and applied to the vsroot volume. However, the Default policy will have no export
rules in it, so access to volumes using the default export policy will not be able to mount until rules are
added. When new volumes are created, if no export policy is defined, then the export policy of the vsroot
volume is inherited.

Vsroot and volume traversal

Because export policies are inherited by default, NetApp recommends opening read access to the root
volume of the SVM (vsroot) to NFS clients when a rule is assigned. Setting any rules for the “default”
export policy that restrict read access to the vsroot denies traversal to the volumes created under that
SVM and will cause mounts to fail. That is because vsroot is “/” in the path to “/junction” and factors into
the ability to mount and traverse.

Qtree exports
In ONTAP, it is possible to set export policies and rules for volumes, as well as underlying qtrees. This
offers a way to restrict/allow client access to storage-managed directories in ONTAP, which can help
storage administrators more easily manage workloads such as home directories.

23 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
By default, qtrees will inherit the export policy of the parent volume. You can explicitly choose or create
an export policy and rule when creating qtrees in ONTAP System Manager, or by using the -export-
policy CLI option.

Figure 6) Qtree export specification – ONTAP System Manager.

Qtree ID considerations
After a noninherited export policy is applied to a qtree, NFS file handles change slightly when dealing with
operations between qtrees. For more information, see the section “Qtree IDs and rename behavior.”

Access control to vsroot

To control access to read/write to vsroot, use the volume unix-permissions and/or ACLs. NetApp
recommends restricting the ability for nonowners of the volume to write to vsroot (at most, 0755
permissions).
When volumes are created, the following values are the defaults, unless specified otherwise:
• 0755 is the default UNIX security set on volumes
• The default owner is UID 0 and the default group is GID 1
To provide the ability to traverse vsroot that also prevents read/list access to NFS clients that can mount
“/”, there are two approaches.

Option 1: Lock down UNIX mode bits on vsroot

The simplest way to lock down vsroot to users is to manage the ownership and permissions from the
cluster:
1. Create a local UNIX user that is unique to the SVM. For example, this UNIX user could be the same
name as the SVM itself.
2. Set the vsroot volume to the new UNIX user. Most NFS clients have a “root” user, which means, by
default, the vsroot volume may have too much access by the root user.
3. Use UNIX permissions that limit groups and others to only traverse permissions, but leaves desired
permissions for the volume owner. (For example, 0611)

Option 2: Use NFSv4.x or NTFS ACLs to lock down vsroot

Another way to lock down vsroot is to leverage ACLs to limit permissions to traverse for everyone except
a select few users or groups. This can be done via NFSv4.x ACLs (even if you mount using NFSv3) or

24 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
through NTFS permissions in environments that are also serving CIFS/SMB protocols. For information
about using NFSv4.x ACLs with NFSv3 mounts, see “Using NFSv4.x ACLs with NFSv3 mounts.”

Export policy rules: Options

The Appendix of this document lists the various options used for export policy rules and what they are
used for, as well as examples. Most export policy rule options can be viewed using the export-policy
rule show command or using ONTAP System Manager.

Export policy rules: Inheritance

In Data ONTAP, export policy rules affect only the volumes and qtrees they are applied to. For example, if
the SVM root volume has a restrictive export policy rule that limits root access to a specific client or
subset of clients, the data volumes that exist under the SVM root volume (which is mounted at “/”) honor
only the export policies applied to them. The one exception is if a volume has an export policy rule that
denies read access to a client and that client must traverse that volume in that path. There is currently not
concept of “bypass traverse checking” for NFS in ONTAP. For an example of export policy rule
inheritance, see “Export policy rule inheritance example.”

Export policy rules: Index

Data ONTAP offers storage administrators the ability to set the priority for export policy rules so that they
are honored in a specific order. The policy is evaluated when access is attempted and the rules are read
in order from 0 to 999999999.
Note: A rule index of 999999999 is an absolute maximum, but NetApp does not recommend it. Use
more sensible numbers for the index.
If a rule index with a higher number (such as 1) is read and has allowed access for a subnet but later a
host that is in that subnet is denied access through a rule at a lower index (such as 99), then that host is
granted access based on the rule that allows access being read earlier in the policy.
Conversely, if a client is denied access through an export policy rule at a higher index and then allowed
access through a global export policy rule later in the policy (such as 0.0.0.0/0 client match), then that
client is denied access.
It is possible to reorder the rule index for policy rules with the export-policy rule setindex
command, or in ONTAP System Manager using “Move Up/Move Down.”
Figure 7 shows the reordering of the rule index in ONTAP System Manager.

Figure 7) Reordering the rule index in ONTAP System Manager.

25 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
It is important to consider the order of the export policy rules when determining the access that is and is
not allowed for clients in ONTAP. If you use multiple export policy rules, be sure that rules that deny or
allow access to a broad range of clients do not step on rules that deny or allow access to those same
clients. Rule index ordering factors in when rules are read; higher-number rules override lower-number
rules in the index.
Note: When you are using more granular rules (such as for a specific client, such as an administrative
host), they should be placed higher up in the rule index. Broader access rules should be placed
lower. For example, an administrative host rule would be at rule index 1 and a policy for 0.0.0.0/0
would be at index 99.

Export policy rules: Clientmatch

The clientmatch option in an export policy rule allows storage administrators to define an access list for
mounting NFS exports, as well as a way to control access permissions at a high level after a client is able
to mount the export.
Valid entries for the NFS export policy rule clientmatch include:
• IP addresses
• Host names
• Domains
• Subnets
• Netgroups
Note: In ONTAP 9.1 and later, it’s possible to define multiple comma-separated IP addresses or
host names in a single rule, rather than needing to create unique policy rules for each.
The following considerations should be made:
• When host names are used for the clientmatch field or in netgroups, a working DNS server or manual
host entries must be available to resolve the host names to IP addresses.
• When netgroups are used, an @ sign should be appended to the front of the netgroup to let ONTAP
know that you are specifying a netgroup rather than a host name.
• If relying on name services for name resolution or netgroup lookups, ensure there is a data LIF in the
SVM that can reach the necessary name services.
• For more information about name services, see TR-4668: Name Services Best Practice Guide.

Export policy rules: Caching

Export policy rules, client host names, and netgroup information are all cached in ONTAP to reduce the
number of requests made to the cluster. This helps improve performance of requests, as well as
alleviating load on networks and name service servers.

Clientmatch caching
When a clientmatch entry is cached, it is kept local to the SVM and then flushes after the cache timeout
period is reached or if the export policy rule table is modified. The default cache timeout period is
dependent on the version of ONTAP and can be verified using the command export-policy access-
cache config show in admin privilege.
These are the default values:
TTL For Positive Entries (Secs): 3600
TTL For Negative Entries (Secs): 3600
Harvest Timeout (Secs): 86400

26 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
To view a specific client in the export policy access-cache, use the following advanced privilege
command:
cluster::*> export-policy access-cache show -node node-02 -vserver NFS -policy default -address
x.x.x.x

Node: node-02
Vserver: NFS
Policy Name: default
IP Address: x.x.x.x
Access Cache Entry Flags: has-usable-data
Result Code: 0
First Unresolved Rule Index: -
Unresolved Clientmatch: -
Number of Matched Policy Rules: 1
List of Matched Policy Rule Indexes: 2
Age of Entry: 11589s
Access Cache Entry Polarity: positive
Time Elapsed since Last Use for Access Check: 11298s
Time Elapsed since Last Update Attempt: 11589s
Result of Last Update Attempt: 0
List of Client Match Strings: 0.0.0.0/0

Host name/DNS caching

When a clientmatch is set to a host name, the name is then resolved to an IP address. This happens
based on the order the SVM’s name service-switch (ns-switch) uses. For example, if the ns-switch host
database is set to files,dns, then ONTAP searches for the client match in local host files and then
searches DNS.
After a name lookup, ONTAP caches the result in the hosts cache. This cache’s settings are configurable
and can be queried and flushed from the ONTAP CLI in advanced privilege.
To query the cache, run the following commands:
cluster::*> name-service cache hosts forward-lookup show -vserver NFS
(vserver services name-service cache hosts forward-lookup show)
IP Address IP Create
Vserver Host Protocol Family Address Source Time TTL(sec)
--------- -------- -------- ------- -------------- ------- ---------- --------
NFS centos7.ntap.local
Any Ipv4 x.x.x.x dns 3/26/2020 3600
16:31:11

To view the hosts cache settings, run the following commands:

cluster::*> name-service cache hosts settings show -vserver NFS -instance
(vserver services name-service cache hosts settings show)

Vserver: NFS
Is Cache Enabled?: true
Is Negative Cache Enabled?: true
Time to Live: 24h
Negative Time to Live: 1m
Is TTL Taken from DNS: true

In some cases, if an NFS client’s IP address changes, the hosts entry might need to be flushed to correct
access issues.
To flush a hosts cache entry, run the following commands:
cluster::*> name-service cache hosts forward-lookup delete -vserver NFS ?
-host -protocol -sock-type -flags -family

27 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Netgroup caching
If using netgroups in the clientmatch field for export rules, then ONTAP does additional work to contact
the netgroup name service server to unpack the netgroup information. The netgroup database in ns-
switch determins the order in which ONTAP queries for netgroups. In addition, the method ONTAP uses
for netgroup support is dependent on if netgroup.byhost support is enabled or disabled. For more
information about netgroup.byhost, see TR-4835: How to Configure LDAP in ONTAP.
• If netgroup.byhost is disabled, then ONTAP queries the entire netgroup and populates the cache with
all netgroup entries. If the netgroup has thousands of clients, then that process could take some time
to complete. Netgroup.byhost is disabled by default.
• If netgroup.byhost is enabled, then ONTAP queries the name service only for the host entry and the
associated netgroup mapping. This greatly reduces the amount to time needed to query for
netgroups, as we don’t need to look up potentially thousands of clients.
These entries are added to the netgroup cache, which is found in vserver services name-service
cache commands. These cache entries can be viewed or flushed, and the timeout values can be
configured.
To view the netgroups cache settings, run the following commands:
cluster::*> name-service cache netgroups settings show -vserver NFS -instance
(vserver services name-service cache netgroups settings show)

Vserver: NFS
Is Cache Enabled?: true
Is Negative Cache Enabled?: true
Time to Live: 24h
Negative Time to Live: 1m
TTL for netgroup members: 30m

When an entire netgroup is cached, it gets placed in the members cache.

cluster::*> name-service cache netgroups members show -vserver DEMO -netgroup netgroup1
(vserver services name-service cache netgroups members show)

Vserver: DEMO
Netgroup: netgroup1
Hosts: sles15-1,x.x.x.x
Create Time: 3/26/2020 12:40:56
Source of the Entry: ldap

When only a single netgroup entry is cached, the IP-to-netgroup and hosts reverse-lookup caches are
populated with the entry.
cluster::*> name-service cache netgroups ip-to-netgroup show -vserver DEMO -host x.x.x.y
(vserver services name-service cache netgroups ip-to-netgroup show)
Vserver IP Address Netgroup Source Create Time
---------- ----------- ------------ ------- -----------
DEMO x.x.x.y
netgroup1 ldap 3/26/2020 17:13:09

cluster::*> name-service cache hosts reverse-lookup show -vserver DEMO -ip x.x.x.y
(vserver services name-service cache hosts reverse-lookup show)
Vserver IP Address Host Source Create Time TTL(sec)
---------- --------------- -------------------- ------ --------------- --------
DEMO x.x.x.y centos8-ipa.centos-ldap.local
dns 3/26/2020 17:13:09
3600

Cache timeout modification considerations

Cache configurations can be modified to different values if needed:

28 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
• Increasing the timeout values keeps cache entries longer, but can result in inconsistencies in client
access if a client changes its IP address (for example, if DHCP is used for client IP addresses and
DNS does not get updated or the export rule uses IP addresses).
• Decreasing the timeout values flushes the cache more frequently for more up-to-date information,
but could add additional load to name service servers and add latency to mount requests from clients.
In most cases, leaving the cache timeout values intact is the best approach. For more information and
guidance, see TR-4668: Name Services Best Practices and TR-4835: How to Configure LDAP in ONTAP.

Exportfs support
In Data ONTAP, exportfs is replaced by the export-policy and name-service cache commands.
When running exportfs, the following would be seen:
"exportfs" is not supported: use the "vserver export-policy" command.

Export policy rules: Access verification

Data ONTAP offers a command (export-policy check-access) that allows you to check an export
policy’s access rule set against a client’s access to help determine if an export policy rule is working
properly for pre-deployment as well as troubleshooting. Its functionality is similar to exportfs -c
functionality. This command leverages all the normal name service communication and cache interaction
that a standard mount from an NFS client would use.
Example of export-policy check-access:
cluster1::*> vserver export-policy check-access -vserver vs1 -client-ip 1.2.3.4 -volume flex_vol
-authentication-method sys -protocol nfs3 -access-type read

Policy Policy Rule

Path Policy Owner Owner Type Index Access
----------------------------- ---------- --------- ---------- ------ ----------
/ default vs1_root volume 1 read
/dir1 default vs1_root volume 1 read
/dir1/dir2 default vs1_root volume 1 read
/dir1/dir2/flex1 data flex_vol volume 10 read

The anon user

The anonymous (anon) user ID specifies a UNIX user ID or user name that is mapped to client requests
that arrive without valid NFS credentials. This can include the root user. Data ONTAP determines a user’s
file access permissions by checking the user’s effective UID against the SVM’s specified name-mapping
and name-switch methods. After the effective UID is determined, the export policy rule is leveraged to
determine the access that UID has.
The –anon option in export policy rules allows specification of a UNIX user ID or user name that is
mapped to client requests that arrive without valid NFS credentials (including the root user). The default
value of –anon, if not specified in export policy rule creation, is 65534. This UID is normally associated
with the user name “nobody” or “nfsnobody” in Linux environments. NetApp appliances use 65534 as the
user “pcuser,” which is generally used for multiprotocol operations, Because of this difference, if using
local files and NFSv4, the name string for users mapped to 65534 might not match. This discrepancy
might cause files to be written as the user specified in the /etc/idmapd.conf file on the client (Linux)
or /etc/default/nfs file (Solaris), particularly when using multiprotocol (CIFS and NFS) on the same
datasets.

The root user

The root user must be explicitly configured in Data ONTAP to specify which machine has root access to a
share, or else anon=0 must be specified. Alternatively, the -superuser option can be used if more

29 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
granular control over root access is desired. If these settings are not configured properly, permission
denied might be encountered when accessing an NFS share as the root user (0). If the –anon option is
not specified in export policy rule creation, the root user ID is mapped to the Nobody user (65534).

AUTH types
When an NFS client authenticates, an AUTH type is sent. An AUTH type specifies how the client is
attempting to authenticate to the server and depends on client-side configuration. Supported AUTH types
include:
• AUTH_NONE/AUTH_NULL. This AUTH type specifies that the request coming in has no identity
(NONE or NULL) and is mapped to the anon user. For more information, see
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1050.txt and http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2623.txt.
• AUTH_SYS/AUTH_UNIX. This AUTH type specifies that the user is authenticated at the client (or
system) and comes in as an identified user. For more information, see
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1050.txt and http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2623.txt.
• AUTH_RPCGSS. This is kerberized NFS authentication.
There are several ways to configure root access to an NFS share. For examples, see “Examples of
controlling the root user.”

Limiting access to the SVM root volume

By default, when an SVM is created, the root volume is configured with 755 permissions and owner:group
of root (0): root (0). This means that:
• The user root (0) has effective permissions of 7, or Full Control.
• The Group and Others permission levels are set to 5, which is Read & Execute.
When this is configured, everyone who accesses the SVM root volume can list and read junctions
mounted below the SVM root volume, which is always mounted to “/” as a junction-path. In addition, the
default export policy rule that is created when an SVM is configured using System Manager or vserver
setup commands permits user access to the SVM root.
Example of the default export policy rule created by Vserver setup:
cluster::> export-policy rule show -vserver nfs_svm -policyname default -instance
(vserver export-policy rule show)

Vserver: nfs_svm
Policy Name: default
Rule Index: 1
Access Protocol: any
Client Match Hostname, IP Address, Netgroup, or Domain: 0.0.0.0/0
RO Access Rule: any
RW Access Rule: any
User ID To Which Anonymous Users Are Mapped: 65534
Superuser Security Types: none
Honor SetUID Bits in SETATTR: true
Allow Creation of Devices: true

In the preceding export policy rule, all clients have any RO and RW access. Root is squashed to anon,
which is set to 65534.
For example, if an SVM has three data volumes, all would be mounted under “/” and could be listed with a
basic ls command by any user accessing the mount.
# mount | grep /mnt
x.x.x.e:/ on /mnt type nfs (rw,nfsvers=3,addr=x.x.x.e)
# cd /mnt
# ls
nfs4 ntfs unix

30 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
In some environments, this behavior might be undesirable, because storage administrators might want to
limit visibility to data volumes to specific groups of users. Although read and write access to the volumes
themselves can be limited on a per-data-volume basis using permissions and export policy rules, users
can still see other paths using the default policy rules and volume permissions.
To limit the ability to users to be able to list SVM root volume contents (and subsequent data volume
paths) but still allow the traversal of the junction paths for data access, the SVM root volume can be
modified to allow only root users to list folders in SVM root. To do this, change the UNIX permissions on
the SVM root volume to 0711 using the volume modify command:
cluster::> volume modify -vserver nfs_svm -volume rootvol -unix-permissions 0711

After this is done, root still has Full Control using the 7 permissions, because it is the owner. Group and
Others get Execute permissions as per the one-mode bit, which only allows them to traverse the paths
using cd.
When a user who is not the root user attempts ls, that user has access denied.
sh-4.1$ ls
ls: cannot open directory .: Permission denied

In many cases, NFS clients log into their workstations as the root user. With the default export policy rule
created by System Manager and Vserver setup, root access is limited.
# id
uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root) context=unconfined_u:unconfined_r:unconfined_t:s0-
s0:c0.c1023
# ls -la
ls: cannot open directory .: Permission denied

This is because the export policy rule attribute superuser is set to None. If root access is desired by
certain clients, this can be controlled by adding export policy rules to the policy and specifying the host IP,
name, netgroup, or subnet in the clientmatch field. When creating this rule, list it ahead of any rule that
might override it, such as a clientmatch of 0.0.0.0/0 or 0/0, which is all hosts.
The following is an example of adding an administrative host rule to a policy:
cluster::> export-policy rule create -vserver nfs_svm -policyname default -clientmatch x.x.x.x -
rorule any -rwrule any -superuser any -ruleindex 1

cluster::> export-policy rule show -vserver nfs_svm -policyname default -ruleindex 1

(vserver export-policy rule show)

Vserver: nfs_svm
Policy Name: default
Rule Index: 1
Access Protocol: any
Client Match Hostname, IP Address, Netgroup, or Domain: x.x.x.x
RO Access Rule: any
RW Access Rule: any
User ID To Which Anonymous Users Are Mapped: 65534
Superuser Security Types: any
Honor SetUID Bits in SETATTR: true
Allow Creation of Devices: true

cluster::> export-policy rule show -vserver nfs_svm -policyname default

(vserver export-policy rule show)
Policy Rule Access Client RO
Vserver Name Index Protocol Match Rule
------------ --------------- ------ -------- --------------------- ---------
nfs_svm default 1 any x.x.x.x any
nfs_svm default 2 any 0.0.0.0/0 any
2 entries were displayed.

31 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Now the client is able to see the directories as the root user.
# ifconfig | grep "inet addr"
inet addr:x.x.x.x Bcast:x.x.225.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
# id
uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root) context=unconfined_u:unconfined_r:unconfined_t:s0-
s0:c0.c1023
# ls
nfs4 ntfs unix

Other clients are not able to list contents as root.

# ifconfig | grep "inet addr"
inet addr:x.x.x.y Bcast:x.x.225.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
# id
uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root) context=unconfined_u:unconfined_r:unconfined_t:s0-
s0:c0.c1023
# mount | grep mnt
x.x.x.e:/ on /mnt type nfs (rw,nfsvers=3,addr=x.x.x.e)
# ls /mnt
ls: cannot open directory .: Permission denied

For more information about export policy rules and their effect on the root user, review the “Root User”
section of this document.
For more information about mode bits, see the following link: http://www.zzee.com/solutions/unix-
permissions.shtml.

Mapping all UIDs to a single UID (squash_all)

In some cases, storage administrators might want to control which UID (such as root) some or all users
map to when coming in through NFS to a UNIX-security-style volume. If a volume has NTFS security
style, doing so is as simple as setting a default Windows user in the NFS server options. However, when
the volume is UNIX security style, no name mapping takes place when coming in from NFS clients. To
control this situation, you can create an export policy rule.

Squashing all UIDs to 65534

The following export policy rule example shows how to force all UIDs (including root) coming into the
system from a specific subnet to use the 65534 UID. This rule can be used to create guest access
policies for users to limit access. This is done with the RO, RW, and superuser authentication type of
None, anon value of 65534, and the clientmatch value specifying the subnet.
Vserver: nfs_svm
Policy Name: default
Rule Index: 1
Access Protocol: any
Client Match Hostname, IP Address, Netgroup, or Domain: x.x.225.0/24
RO Access Rule: none
RW Access Rule: none
User ID To Which Anonymous Users Are Mapped: 65534
Superuser Security Types: none
Honor SetUID Bits in SETATTR: true
Allow Creation of Devices: true

Making all UIDs root

The following export policy rule example shows how to force all UIDs (including root) coming into the
system from a specific subnet to use the UID associated with root (0). This rule can be used to allow full
access to users in a specific subnet to avoid overhead on permissions management. This access is
enabled with the RO and RW authentication type of None, superuser value of None, anon value of 0, and
the clientmatch value specifying the subnet.

32 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
For example:
Vserver: nfs_svm
Policy Name: default
Rule Index: 1
Access Protocol: any
Client Match Hostname, IP Address, Netgroup, or Domain: x.x.225.0/24
RO Access Rule: none
RW Access Rule: none
User ID To Which Anonymous Users Are Mapped: 0
Superuser Security Types: none
Honor SetUID Bits in SETATTR: true
Allow Creation of Devices: true

Special character considerations

Most common text characters in Unicode (when they are encoded with UTF-8 format) use encoding that
is equal to or smaller than three bytes. This common text includes all modern written languages, such as
Chinese, Japanese, and German. However, with the popularity of special characters such as the emoji,
some UTF-8 character sizes have grown beyond three bytes. For example, a trophy symbol is a character
that requires four bytes in UTF-8 encoding.
Special characters include, but are not limited to, the following:
• Emojis
• Music symbols
• Mathematical symbols
When a special character is written to a FlexGroup volume, the following behavior occurs:

# mkdir /flexgroup4TB/
mkdir: cannot create directory ‘/flexgroup4TB/\360\237\217\206’: Permission denied

In the preceding example, \360\237\217\206 is hex 0xF0 0x9F 0x8F 0x86 in UTF-8, which is a
trophy symbol.
ONTAP software did not natively support UTF-8 sizes that were greater than three bytes in NFS, as
indicated in bug 229629. To handle character sizes that exceeded three bytes, ONTAP placed the extra
bytes into an area in the operating system known as bagofbits. These bits were stored until the client
requests them. Then the client interprets the character from the raw bits. FlexVol supports bagofbits, in
all ONTAP releases and FlexGroup volumes added support for bagofbits in ONTAP 9.2.
Also, ONTAP has an event management system message for issues with bagofbits handling.
Message Name: wafl.bagofbits.name
Severity: ERROR

Corrective Action: Use the "volume file show-inode" command with the file ID and volume name
information to find the file path. Access the parent directory from an NFSv3 client and rename
the entry using Unicode characters.

Description: This message occurs when a read directory request from an NFSv4 client is made to a
Unicode-based directory in which directory entries with no NFS alternate name contain non-Unicode
characters.

Support for utf8mb4 volume language

As previously mentioned, special characters might exceed the supported three bytes UTF-8 encoding that
is natively supported. ONTAP then uses the bagofbits functionality to allow these characters to work.

33 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
This method for storing inode information is not ideal, so starting in ONTAP 9.5, utf8mb4 volume
language support was added. When a volume uses this language, special characters that are four bytes
in size will be stored properly and not in bagofbits.
Volume language is used to convert names sent by NFSv3 clients to Unicode, and to convert on-disk
Unicode names to the encoding expected by NFSv3 clients. In legacy situations in which NFS hosts are
configured to use non-UTF-8 encodings, you will want to use the corresponding volume language. Use of
UTF-8 has become almost universal these days, so the volume language is likely to be UTF-8.
NFSv4 requires use of UTF-8, so there is no need to use non-UTF-8 encoding for NFSv4 hosts. Similarly,
CIFS uses Unicode natively, so it will work with any volume language. However, use of utf8mb4 is
recommended because files with Unicode names above the basic plane are not converted properly on
non-utf8mb4 volumes.

Potential issues with UTF-8 characters

In some instances, UTF-8 file names with character representation containing 0x80 (octal \0200) are not
able to be managed using NFS mounts. Many of these characters occur in the Unicode General
Punctuation block. For example, the name 'test•file' is encoded as 'test\xe2\x80\xa2file' and
that name might be affected because it contains 0x80 in the UTF-8 sequence. See bug 998468 for
details.
Note: This issue only affects files created prior to ONTAP 8.3.2
The option -v3-search-unconverted-filename was added in ONTAP 9 to avoid this issue.
[-v3-search-unconverted-filename {enabled|disabled}] - Lookup for the filename in unconverted
language if converted language lookup fails (privilege: advanced)
This optional parameter specifies whether to continue the search with unconverted name while
doing lookup in a directory.

NFS version considerations

NFSv2 considerations
NFSv2 support was deprecated in Data ONTAP 8.2 and is no longer available to use.

NFSv3 considerations
The following section covers functionality, known issues, and considerations with NFSv3 in ONTAP.

What happens during NFSv3 mounts?

When mounting a file system over NFSv3, the following steps occur:
1. A Remote Procedure Call (RPC) is made to port 111 (portmapper) of the NFS server to attempt a
TCP connection through the portmapper.
2. When the RPC has been acknowledged, portmapper issues a GETPORT call to port 111 of the NFS
server data LIF to obtain which port NFS is allowed on.
3. The NFS server returns the port 2049 (NFS) to the client.
4. The client then closes the connection to port 111.
5. A new RPC call is made to port 2049 of the NFS server data LIF.
6. The NFS server returns the call successfully, and the client sends an NFS NULL call to port 2049 of
the NFS server’s data LIF. This checks whether the parent volume export policy rule allows access to
the mount. In this case, the parent volume is mounted to /, or the SVM root.
7. The NFS NULL call is returned successfully, and the client proceeds with the mount attempt.

34 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
8. Portmapper sends another GETPORT call to the NFS server’s data LIF asking for the mountd port
and provides the credentials, NFS version number, and whether the mount uses TCP or UDP.
9. The cluster checks the NFS settings and verifies whether the credentials supplied are allowed to
mount based on the exported volume’s export policy rules. Name service servers (such as DNS, NIS,
LDAP) are contacted as necessary. Caches are populated. If the NFS version or TCP/UDP is not
allowed, the client reports the error.
10. The NFS server replies successfully if the version provided is supported and if the mount can use the
specified TCP or UDP connection. It also replies if the AUTH security provider is supported
(AUTH_SYS or AUTH_GSS, for example).
11. When the GETPORT call passes, the client issues a V3 MNT call to the junction path specified in the
mount command through port 635 (mountd) of the NFS server data LIF.
12. ONTAP looks for the provided path to the export. If the entry exists, the cluster gathers the file handle
information, which is unique to each volume.
13. The NFS server returns the file handle to the client, as well as replies which AUTH varieties are
supported by the export policy rule. If the AUTH variety provided by the server matches what the
client sent, the mount succeeds.
14. Portmapper from the client then sends another GETPORT call for NFS, this time providing the client’s
host name.
15. The NFS server replies with port 2049, and the call succeeds.
16. Another NFS NULL call is made from the client over port 2049 of the NFS data LIF and is
acknowledged by the NFS server.
17. A series of NFS packets with FSINFO and PATHCONF information is traded between the client and
the NFS server.

Effects of file system ID changes in ONTAP

NFS uses a file system ID (FSID) when interacting between client and server. This FSID lets the NFS
client know where data lives in the NFS server’s file system. Because ONTAP can span multiple file
systems across multiple nodes by way of junction paths, this FSID can change depending on where data
lives. Some older Linux clients can have problems differentiating these FSID changes, resulting in failures
during basic attribute operations, such as chown and chmod.
An example of this issue can be found in bug 671319. If you disable the FSID change with NFSv3, be
sure to enable the -v3-64bit-identifiers option in ONTAP 9. But keep in mind that this option
could affect older legacy applications that require 32-bit file IDs.
For information about how this impacts high file count environments, see TR-4571: NetApp FlexGroup
Volumes Best Practices and Implementation.

How FSIDs operate with NetApp Snapshot copies

When a NetApp Snapshot™ copy of a volume is created, a copy of a file’s inodes is preserved in the file
system for late access. The file theoretically exists in two locations.
With NFSv3, even though there are two copies of essentially the same file, the FSIDs of those files are
not identical. FSIDs of files are formulated by using a combination of NetApp WAFL inode numbers,
volume identifiers, and Snapshot copy IDs. Because every Snapshot copy has a different ID, every
Snapshot copy of a file has a different FSID in NFSv3, regardless of the setting of the -v3-fsid-
change option. The NFS RFC specification does not require FSIDs for a file to be identical across file
versions.

35 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
FSID changes with storage virtual machine disaster recovery
Data ONTAP 8.3.1 introduced a new feature to enable disaster recovery for entire SVMs called storage
virtual machine disaster recovery (SVM DR). This feature is covered in TR-4015: SnapMirror
Configuration and Best Practices Guide.
When SVM DR is used with NFS exports in versions prior to ONTAP 9.0, the FSID of those exports
changes, and clients have to remount the exports on the destination system. Otherwise, the clients show
stale for NFS operations on those mounts. If the mount’s FSID should be preserved by the SVM DR
relationship, then the destination SVM must be created with the -is-msid-preserve option set to True
in Diag Privilege mode. When this option is set, SnapMirror relationships used in SVM DR show -msid-
preserve as True in their snapmirror show output. This should be used with caution, because SVM
DR updates are asynchronous. The source SVM should be confirmed as down before attempting to write
to the destination SVM with the same FSID.

NFSv3 security considerations

NFSv3 is considered less secure than NFSv4.x, but that does not mean there aren’t security measures
you can put into place. The following sections cover some of the NFSv3 security considerations as the
apply to ONTAP.

NFSv3 export rules

One way to secure NFS mounts is through export rules. Export rules allow storage administrators to fence
access to volumes or qtrees to specific clients in the environment. For example, if an NFS client is not
listed in an export rule that allows access, then that client will not be able to mount the export.
Export rules also provide ways to limit whether a specific client is allowed to read, write, setUID
permissions, and access to change file ownerships. Rules can define which specific NFS versions are
allowed to mount, as well as what security flavors are allowed (such as AUTH_SYS or Kerberos).

Security limitations of export rules

Export rules are just one way to secure NFS mounts, but by themselves, don’t offer enough security to
approach enterprise standards. Export rules depend on clientmatch entries to limit access. This means
someone could spoof an IP address in the clientmatch list and gain access to the export without any other
authentication requirements, unless other security concepts, such as Kerberos authentication, are also
required by the export rule.

NFSv3 permissions
NFSv3 offers basic file and folder permissions to control access to end users. These permissions follow
the NFS mode bits definitions in RFC 1813 starting on page 22.

Security limitations of NFSv3 permissions

Mode bit permissions cover only owner, group and everyone else in the semantics – meaning that there
are no granular user access controls in place for basic NFSv3. ONTAP does not support POSIX ACLs, so
granular ACLs are only possible in the following scenarios with NFSv3:
• NTFS security style volumes (CIFS server required) with valid UNIX to Windows user mappings.
• NFSv4.x ACLs applied using an admin client mounting NFSv4.x to apply ACLs.
Additionally, mode bits don’t provide the same level of granularity in permissions that NTFS or NFSv4.x
ACLs provide. The following table compares the permission granularity between NFSv3 mode bits and
NFSv4.x ACLs. For information about NFSv4.x ACLs, see: https://linux.die.net/man/5/nfs4_acl.
Table 6 compares the NFSv3 mode bits against the NFSv4.x ACL granularity.

36 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Table 6) NFSv3 mode bits versus NFSv4.x ACL granularity.
NFSv3 mode bits NFSv4.x ACLs
• Set user ID on execution • ACE types (Allow/Deny/Audit)
• Set group ID on execution • Inheritance flags:
• Save swapped text (not defined in POSIX) − directory-inherit
• Read permission for owner − file-inherit
• Write permission for owner − no-propagate-inherit
• Execute permission for owner on a file; or look
− inherit-only
up (search) permission for owner in directory
• Read permission for group • Permissions:
• Write permission for group − read-data (files) / list-directory (directories)
• Execute permission for group on a file; or look − write-data (files) / create-file (directories)
up (search) permission for group in directory − append-data (files) / create-subdirectory
• Read permission for others (directories)
• Write permission for others − execute (files) / change-directory
• Execute permission for others on a file; or look (directories)
up (search) permission for others in directory − delete
− delete-child
− read-attributes
− write-attributes
− read-named-attributes
− write-named-attributes
− read-ACL
− write-ACL
− write-owner
• Synchronize

Finally, NFS group membership (in both NFSv3 and NFSV4.x) is limited to a maximum of 16 as per the
RPC packet limits. Options exist in ONTAP to help extend beyond those limits in “Auxiliary GIDs –
addressing the 16 GID limitation for NFS.”

NFSv3 user and group IDs

NFSv3 user and group IDs come across the wire as numeric IDs, rather than names. ONTAP does no
name resolution for these numeric IDs in UNIX security style volumes and qtrees with no NFSv4.x ACLs
present. With NTFS security styles and NFSv4.x ACLs, ONTAP will attempt to resolve a numeric ID to a
valid Windows user to negotiate access. For more information, see “Viewing and managing NFS
credentials.”

Security limitations of NFSv3 user and group IDs

The client and server never have to confirm that the user attempting a read or write with a numeric ID is
actually a valid user. It’s just implicitly trusted. This opens the filesystem up to potential breaches simply
by spoofing a known numeric ID. To prevent this from creating a security hole with NFSv3, implementing
Kerberos for NFS forces users to authenticate with a username and password or keytab file to get a
Kerberos ticket to allow access into a mount. Using this in conjunction with NFSv4.x or NTFS ACLs can
help mitigate performance risk with NFSv3 numeric IDs.

37 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Advanced NFSv3 security concepts
The following section covers two advanced security concepts for NFSv3. The term Advanced refers to the
concepts being either nonstandard or containing multiple steps for configuration.

Using ACLs with NFSv3

As previously mentioned, POSIX ACLs are not supported for use with NFSv3 in ONTAP. However, there
are two options for controlling NFSv3 user and group access with ACLs:
• NTFS ACLs. ONTAP provides a way to present datasets in the same volume to multiple NAS
protocols simultaneously. For example, a volume can host clients through NFS and SMB, while
protocol-specific features such as locking and permissions are negotiated by ONTAP to ensure data
resiliency and security.
NFSv3 client access can be managed through file and folder permissions as configured from
Windows clients when using ONTAP for both CIFS/SMB and NFS access. When a CIFS/SMB server
is created and volume security styles are using NTFS permission semantics, NFSv3 clients will
adhere to those NTFS ACLs by way of UNIX to Windows user name mapping that ONTAP requires
for NFS access to volumes containing NTFS ACLs. For more information on this functionality, see
“Multiprotocol NAS.”
• NFSv4.x ACLs. NFSv4.x is supported in ONTAP along with NFSv3 and offers granular file and folder
permissions in the same vein as NTFS ACLs. ONTAP also allows storage administrators to set
NFSv4.x ACLs through an administrator client that is honored by NFSv3 clients. When an NFSv3
client attempts access to a mount with NFSv4.x ACLs, ONTAP forces the numeric user ID to resolve
to a valid UNIX user through the NFSv4.x name mapping requirements so the NFSv4.x ACL can be
honored properly. For more information about NFSv4.x ACLs, see “NFSv4.x ACLs.”

Using NFS Kerberos with NFSv3

Kerberos is possible to use with NFSv3, but there are several caveats:
• NFSv3 is made up of several ancillary protocols in addition to the NFS protocol. When Kerberos is
used with NFSv3, only the NFS packets use Kerberos. Mount, portmap, and so on do not use
Kerberos.
• Export policy rules with NFSv3 and Kerberos should use both sys and krb5* in their settings to reflect
the lack of Kerberos support for ancillary protocols when using ONTAP versions 8.2P5 or earlier.
Modern releases do not require this modification to the export policy rules. For more information, see
bug 756081.
Note: For more information about using Kerberos for NFS, see TR-4616: NFS Kerberos in ONTAP.

Blocking portmap with ONTAP firewall policies

In ONTAP 9.3 and earlier, the portmap service (rpcbind) was always accessible on port 111 in network
configurations that relied on the built-in ONTAP firewall rather than a third-party firewall, creating a
potential security vulnerability. Starting in ONTAP 9.4, you can modify firewall policies to control whether
the portmap service is accessible on particular LIFs. The new firewall policy is called mgmt-nfs and has
the following rules by default:
mgmt-nfs
dns 0.0.0.0/0, ::/0
http 0.0.0.0/0, ::/0
ndmp 0.0.0.0/0, ::/0
ndmps 0.0.0.0/0, ::/0
ntp 0.0.0.0/0, ::/0
portmap 0.0.0.0/0, ::/0
snmp 0.0.0.0/0, ::/0

Considerations:

38 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
• On upgrade, ONTAP adds the portmap service to all existing firewall policies, default or custom.
• When you create a new cluster or new IPspace, ONTAP adds the portmap service only to the default
data policy, not to the default management or intercluster policies.
• You can add the portmap service to default or custom policies as needed, and remove the service as
needed.

Inheriting the group owner from the parent

When migrating from some competitor systems, there might be an option in use to inherit a parent
directory’s group owner when creating new files and directories. ONTAP does not have this particular
option, but similar functionality can be achieved using the sticky bit flag for the permissions.
1. To set the sticky bit, run the following commands:
# chmod 2775 setguid/

2. Change the owner of the parent directory.

# chown prof1:ProfGroup setguid/

The folder now has an “s” present in the execute portion of the group mode bits.
# ls -la | grep setguid
drwxrwsr-x 2 prof1 ProfGroup 4096 Oct 6 16:10 setguid

When a new file is created, it inherits the group from the parent directory. In this case, root is the
user.
# cd setguid/
# id
uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root)
# touch newfile
# ls -la
total 8
drwxrwsr-x 2 prof1 ProfGroup 4096 Oct 6 2020 .
drwxrwxrwx 20 root root 4096 Oct 6 16:10 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root ProfGroup 0 Oct 6 2020 newfile

NFSv4.x considerations
The following section covers functionality, known issues, and considerations with NFSv4.x in ONTAP.

Enabling NFSv4.x
To start using NFSv4.x with ONTAP in your environment, there is a list of steps to perform/review:
1. Set the NFS ID domain string in /etc/idmapd.conf to the same value as the -v4-id-domain
option on the NFS SVM.
2. Ensure that the users and groups accessing the NFSv4.x client also exist (or can be queried from)
the ONTAP SVM. These users and groups need to have the same names and case sensitivity.
− For example, [email protected] on the NFS client needs to match [email protected] on
the ONTAP NFS server.
3. If using LDAP or NIS for UNIX identities, ensure the user and group lookups return the expected IDs
and group members.
4. Export policy rules for volumes should be set to allow NFSv4 as a protocol.
5. Data LIFs in the environment should have NFS as an allowed protocol (net int show -fields allowed-
protocols).
6. The desired NFSv4.x versions should be enabled. If only version 4.1 is desired, enable only that
version and disable version 4.0.

39 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
7. If NFSv4.x ACLs are desired, you must enable them for the specific NFSv4.x version you wish to use
them with. (-v4.0-acl, -v4.1-acl)
8. Clients will negotiate the highest NFS version the NFS server supports. If some clients require
NFSv3, they will need to change how they mount.

Advantages of using NFSv4.x

The following are some advantages to using NFSv4.x in your environment:
• Firewall-friendly because NFSv4 uses only a single port (2049) for its operations
• Advanced and aggressive cache management, such as delegations in NFSv4.x
• Strong RPC security choices that employ cryptography
• Internationalization
• Compound operations
• Works only with TCP
• Stateful protocol (not stateless like NFSv3)
• Kerberos configuration for efficient authentication mechanisms:
− Support for DES and 3DES for encryption in clustered Data ONTAP 8.2.x and earlier
− AES support in 8.3 and later
• Migration (for dNFS) using referrals
• Support of access control that is compatible with UNIX and Windows
• String-based user and group identifiers
• Parallel access to data through pNFS (does not apply for NFSv4.0)
It is important that you treat each specific use case differently. NFSv4.x is not ideal for all workload types.
Be sure to test for desired functionality and performance before rolling out NFSv4.x en masse.
Note: ONTAP currently does not support NFSv4.x session trunking.

Performance enhancements for NFSv4.x operations

NetApp is constantly striving to improve performance for each ONTAP release. NFSv4.x performance is a
priority, as it is the future for NFS. Performance enhancements are listed below, along with the ONTAP
release they were introduced. For the best possible performance with NFS, always run the latest patched
ONTAP release available.

NFSv4.x fastpath (introduced in ONTAP 8.2)

Starting in Data ONTAP 8.2, NFS fastpath was introduced to potentially improve NFSv4 performance for
reads and writes. This improvement was made by bypassing the internal processing of NFSv4 packets
into ONTAP-centric packets when the data request is made on a LIF that is local to the node hosting the
volume. When combined with other features such as pNFS or referrals, localized data can be guaranteed
for each read and write request, thus allowing consistent use of the NFSv4 fastpath. NFSv3 has always
had an NFS fastpath concept. NFS fastpath is enabled by default.

NFSv4.x multithreaded operations (introduced in ONTAP 8.2)

In Data ONTAP 8.2 and later, multiprocessor support was added for NFSv4.x read and write operations.
Metadata operations, however, still use a single threaded approach. In previous releases, NFSv4.x read
and write operations were single threaded, thus allowing a potential bottleneck at the CPU for the protocol
domain. Using multiple processors for read and write operations can greatly increase throughput on
NetApp systems that contain more than one CPU for NFSv4.x workloads that are read and write heavy.

40 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Note: NFSv3 has always used multiple processors for reads and writes. NFSv3 also uses multiple
processors for metadata operations.

NFSv4.x — Performance improvements for streaming workload types (introduced in ONTAP 9.0)
ONTAP 9.0 introduced an improvement to how streaming workload types such as VMware, Oracle, and
SAP HANA performed with NFSv4.1 by adding large I/O support. This allowed NFS (both v3 and 4.x) to
use up to 1MB for both reads and writes.

NFSv4.x — Performance improvements for metadata workloads (introduced in ONTAP 9.5)

Many improvements were added into ONTAP 9.5 to improve metadata workloads, including:
• NFSv4.0 cache I/O support
• Optimizations of NFSv4.x metadata operations
• Increased caching
• Improved locking performance
• Increased StorePool limits

NFSv4.x FlexGroup volume support (introduced in ONTAP 9.7)

In addition to the metadata performance improvements added in ONTAP 9.5, FlexGroup volume support
can help increase metadata workload performance as well, by way of parallelization of file ingest
operations. For more information about FlexGroup volumes, see TR-4571: NetApp FlexGroup Volumes
Best Practices and Implementation.

NFSv4.x performance enhancements for metadata operations (ONTAP 9.8)

Some enhancements were added to ONTAP 9.8 to improve the overall performance for NFSv4.x when
dealing with high metadata workloads, such as what would be seen with standard NAS benchmark tests
for software builds. These changes resulted in a marked improvement for these workloads, bringing the
peak IOPS achieved at 1ms latency a bit closer to what NFSv3 provides.
These enhancements include:
• Improved write lock usage
• Optimized QoS performance
• Improved handling of replay operations (see bug 1281571)
• Consolidation of compound operations
• Storepool optimizations
• OPEN/CLOSE enhancements
• Nconnect support (for more information, see the section “Nconnect”)
• Parallelization of UNLINK operations
• Parallelization of READDIR operations

NFSv4.x performance optimizations in ONTAP 9.9.1

Additional optimizations were added to ONTAP 9.9.1 to improve the overall performance for NFSv4.x
when dealing with high metadata workloads, such as what would be seen with standard NAS benchmark
tests for software builds. These changes resulted in a marked improvement over ONTAP 9.8 for these
workloads, bringing the peak IOPS achieved at 1ms latency within ~22% of what NFSv3 offers:
• Prefetch of attributes during LOOKUP and CLOSE operations
• Prefetch of ACCESS calls during OPEN to reduce metadata operations
• GETATTR after WRITE optimizations

41 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
• Memory pool to store prefetched attributes
• FlexGroup optimizations (cache FlexGroup volume details to optimize LOOKUP)
• Path length reduction for export checks

NFSv4.0
The NetApp Data ONTAP NFSv4.x implementation provides the following capabilities:
• Write order. The implementation provides the capability to write data blocks to shared storage in the
same order as they occur in the data buffer.
• Synchronous write persistence. Upon return from a synchronous write call, ONTAP (clustered and
7-Mode) guarantees that all the data has been written to durable, persistent storage.
• Distributed file locking. The implementation provides the capability to request and obtain an
exclusive lock on the shared storage, without assigning the locks to two servers simultaneously.
• Unique write ownership. ONTAP (clustered and 7-Mode) guarantees that the file lock is the only
server process that can write to the file. After Data ONTAP transfers the lock to another server,
pending writes queued by the previous owner fail.

Transitioning from NFSv3 to NFSv4.x: Considerations

The following section covers some considerations that need to be addressed when migrating from NFSv3
to NFSv4.x. When choosing to use NFSv4.x after using NFSv3, you cannot simply turn it on and have it
work as expected. There are specific items to address, such as:
• Domain strings/ID mapping
• Storage failover considerations
• Name services
• Firewall considerations
• Export policy rule considerations
• Client support
• NFSv4.x features and functionality
For an in-depth look at the NFSv4.x protocol, including information about NFSv4.2, see the SNIA
overview of NFSv4.

NFSv4.x ID domain mapping

While customers prepare to migrate their existing setup and infrastructure from NFSv3 to NFSv4, some
environmental changes must be made before moving to NFSv4. One of them is ID domain mapping.
When NFSv3 clients access a mount, the numeric ID is passed to the NFS server and no further ID
lookups are needed, provided all portions of the access are using UNIX security with NFSv3 semantics.
When NFSv4.x clients access a mount, a name string is passed from the client to the server that contains
the user or group principal ([email protected]).
The server then will attempt to verify that it knows about a principal with the same exact name (case
sensitive) through its name service and NFS server configuration. If that name string does not exist on
both client and server, then the user is squashed to a nobody user as defined in the client NFSv4.x
configuration file. This provides an extra layer of security over NFSv3.

42 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Bypassing the name string – Numeric IDs
In some cases, storage administrators might not want to use NFSv4.x for its security, but instead for its
locking mechanisms. Or they might not want to deal with the configuration overhead of client/server name
strings.
In those cases, there is an option called v4-numeric-ids. With this option enabled, if the client does
not have access to the name mappings, numeric IDs can be sent in the user name and group name
fields. The server accepts them and treats them as representing the same user as would be represented
by a v2/v3 UID or GID having the corresponding numeric value. If the client does have a name string that
matches, then the client uses the name string rather than the numeriCID. If the client and server have
matching user names but mismatched domain strings, then numerics won’t be used; instead, the user
name/group name reverts to nobody. This is a common scenario with the root user, because that user
always exists on client and server, while the ID strings for NFSv4 in ONTAP defaults to
defaultv4iddomain.com. Because the NFS clients default to no domain string setting in the
idmapd.conf file (and instead falls back to the DNS domain for NFSv4 domain), mismatches often
occur in that scenario.
Essentially, this option makes NFSv4.x behave more like NFSv3. The default value of this option is
Enabled. For considerations regarding the use of extended group support, see “Considerations for
numeric ID authentication (NFSv3 and NFSv4.x).”

Storage failover considerations

NFSv4.x uses a completely different locking model than NFSv3. Locking in NFSv4.x is a lease-based
model that is integrated into the protocol rather than separated as it is in NFSv3 (NLM).
From the Data ONTAP documentation:
In accordance with RFC 3530, Data ONTAP "defines a single lease period for all state held by an
NFS client. If the client does not renew its lease within the defined period, all states
associated with the client's lease may be released by the server." The client can renew its lease
explicitly or implicitly by performing an operation, such as reading a file.
Furthermore, Data ONTAP defines a grace period, which is a period of special processing in which
clients attempt to reclaim their locking state during a server recovery.

Table 7) NFSv4.x lock terminology.

Term Definition (per RFC 3530)
Lease The time period in which Data ONTAP irrevocably grants a lock to a client
Grace period The time period in which clients attempt to reclaim their locking state from
Data ONTAP during server recovery
Lock Refers to both record (byte-range) locks as well as file (share) locks unless
specifically stated otherwise

For more information about NFSv4.x locking, see the section in this document on “NFSv4 locking.”
Because of this new locking methodology, as well as the statefulness of the NFSv4.x protocol, storage
failover operates differently as compared to NFSv3. For more information, see the section in this
document called “Nondisruptive operations with NFS.”

Name services
When deciding to use NFSv4.x, it is a NetApp best practice to centralize the NFSv4.x users in name
services such as LDAP or NIS. Doing so allows all clients and Data ONTAP NFS servers to leverage the
same resources and guarantees that all names, UIDs, and GIDs are consistent across the
implementation. For more information about name services, see TR-4835: How to Configure LDAP in
ONTAP and TR-4668: Name Services Best Practices.

43 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Firewall considerations
NFSv3 required several ports to be opened for ancillary protocols such as NLM, NSM, and so on in
addition to port 2049. NFSv4.x requires only port 2049. If you want to use NFSv3 and NFSv4.x in the
same environment, open all relevant NFS ports. These ports are referenced in “Default NFS ports in
ONTAP.” For more information and guidance on firewalls, see “NFS security best practices.”

Volume language considerations

In Data ONTAP, volumes can have specific languages set. This capability is intended to be used for
internationalization of file names for languages that use characters not common to English, such as
Japanese, Chinese, German, and so on. When using NFSv4.x, RFC 3530 states that UTF-8 is
recommended.
11. Internationalization

The primary issue in which NFS version 4 needs to deal with

internationalization, or I18N, is with respect to file names and
other strings as used within the protocol. The choice of string
representation must allow reasonable name/string access to clients
which use various languages. The UTF-8 encoding of the UCS as
defined by [ISO10646] allows for this type of access and follows the
policy described in "IETF Policy on Character Sets and Languages",
[RFC2277].

When changing a volume's language, every file in the volume must be accessed after the change to
make sure that they all reflect the language change. Use a simple ls -lR to access a recursive listing of
files. If the environment is a high file count environment, consider using XCP to scan the files quickly.

Export policy rules

If an environment was configured for NFSv3 and the export policy rule option –protocol was limited to
allow NFSv3 only, then the option must be modified to allow NFSv4. Additionally, policy rules could be
configured to allow access only to NFSv4.x clients.
For example:
cluster::> export-policy rule modify -policy default -vserver NAS -protocol nfs4

For more information, consult the product documentation for your specific version of ONTAP.

Client considerations
When you use NFSv4.x, clients are as important to consider as the NFS server. For specific questions
about the NFSv4.x configuration, contact the operating system vendor.
Follow these client considerations when implementing NFSv4.x:
Note: Other considerations might be necessary.
• NFSv4.x is supported.
• The fstab file and NFS configuration files are configured properly. When mounting, the client
negotiates the highest NFS version available with the NFS server. If NFSv4.x is not allowed by the
client or fstab specifies NFSv3, then NFSv4.x is not used at mount.
• The idmapd.conf file is configured with the proper settings, including the correct NFSv4.x ID domain.
• The client either contains identical users/groups and UID/GID (including case sensitivity) in local
passwd and group files or uses the same name service server as the NFS server/ONTAP SVM.
• If using name services on the client, ensure the client is configured properly for name services
(nsswitch.conf, ldap.conf, sssd.conf, and so on) and the appropriate services are started, running,
and configured to start at boot.

44 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
• The NFSv4.x service is started, running, and configured to start at boot.

Making NFSv4.x act like NFSv3

In some cases, choosing NFSv4.x is not due to any security concern, but rather because an application
vendor or service provider requires its use. Without an infrastructure to provide valid NFSv4.x ID domain
information and to map users properly, things can become complicated. In scenarios where you want
NFSv4.x to act like NFSv3, you can do the following:
• Ensure that -v4-numeric-ids is enabled on the NFS SVM (default is enabled)
• Ensure that the NFSv4.x ID domains match on the SVM (-v4-id-domain) and in the client’s
idmapd.conf file (or is the same as the DNS domain name of the client)
• Set /sys/module/nfsd/parameters/nfs4_disable_idmapping (or its equivalent) to Y on the
NFS client
When these steps are followed, the clients bypass ID mapping and instead fall back to numeric IDs when
a username is not present on both the server and client.

NFSv4 features and functionality

NFSv4.x is the next evolution of the NFS protocol and enhances NFSv3 with new features and
functionality, such as referrals, delegations, pNFS, and so on. These features are covered throughout this
document and should be factored into any design decisions for NFSv4.x implementations.

NFSv4 user ID mapping

As previously mentioned in this document (in the “NFSv4.x ID domain mapping” section), NFSv4.x clients
and servers attempt to map the user ID domain strings for added security. If numeric IDs are preferred,
ONTAP has an NFS option (-v4-numeric-ids) to avoid requirements for name strings.

NFSv4.x ACLs
The NFSv4.x protocol can provide access control in the form of ACLs, which are similar in concept to
those found in CIFS. An NFSv4 ACL consists of individual Access Control Entries (ACEs), each of which
provides an access control directive to the server. Data ONTAP defaults to 400 ACEs and supports a
maximum of 1,024 ACEs with a configurable NFS option (-v4-acl-max-aces).

Benefits of Enabling NFSv4 ACLs

The benefits of enabling NFSv4 ACLs include the following:
• Granular control of user access to files and directories
• Better NFS security
• Improved interoperability with CIFS
• Removal of the NFS limitation of 16 groups per user with AUTH_SYS security
− ACLs bypass the need for GID resolution, which effectively removes the GID limit

Compatibility between NFSv4 ACLs and SMB clients

NFSv4 ACLs are different from Windows file-level ACLs (NTFS ACLs) but carry similar functionality.
However, in multiprotocol NAS environments, if NFSv4.x ACLs are present, clients using SMB2.0 and
later won’t be able to view ACLs from Windows security tabs – even if the NFS option ntacl-display-
permissive-perms and .the CIFS/SMB option is-unix-nt-acl-enabled are set. See bug 928026
for details.

How NFSv4 ACLs work

45 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
When a client sets an NFSv4 ACL on a file during a SETATTR operation, the NetApp storage system sets
that ACL on the object, replacing any existing ACL. If there is no ACL on a file, then the mode
permissions on the file are calculated from OWNER@, GROUP@, and EVERYONE@. If there are any
existing SUID/SGID/STICKY bits on the file, they are not affected.
When a client gets an NFSv4 ACL on a file during the course of a GETATTR operation, the NetApp
system reads the NFSV4 ACL associated with the object, constructs a list of ACEs, and returns the list to
the client. If the file has an NT ACL or mode bits, then an ACL is constructed from mode bits and is
returned to the client.
Access is denied if a DENY ACE is present in the ACL; access is granted if an ALLOW ACE exists.
However, access is also denied if neither of the ACEs is present in the ACL.
A security descriptor consists of a Security ACL (SACL) and a Discretionary ACL (DACL). When NFSv4
interoperates with CIFS, the DACL is one-to-one mapped with NFSv4 and CIFS. The DACL consists of
the ALLOW and the DENY ACEs.
If a basic chmod is run on a file or folder with NFSv4.x ACLs set, the ACLs will be removed unless the
NFS option v4-acl-preserve is enabled.
A client using NFSv4 ACLs can set and view ACLs for files and directories on the system. When a new
file or subdirectory is created in a directory that has an ACL, the new file or subdirectory inherits all ACEs
in the ACL that have been tagged with the appropriate inheritance flags. For access checking, CIFS users
are mapped to UNIX users. The mapped UNIX user and that user’s group membership are checked
against the ACL.
If a file or directory has an ACL, that ACL is used to control access no matter which protocol—NFSv3,
NFSv4, or CIFS—is used to access the file or directory. The ACL is also used even if NFSv4 is no longer
enabled on the system.
Files and directories inherit ACEs from NFSv4 ACLs on parent directories (possibly with appropriate
modifications) as long as the ACEs have been tagged with the correct inheritance flags.
When a file or directory is created as the result of an NFSv4 request, the ACL on the resulting file or
directory depends on whether the file creation request includes an ACL or only standard UNIX file access
permissions. The ACL also depends on whether the parent directory has an ACL.
• If the request includes an ACL, that ACL is used.
• If the request includes only standard UNIX file access permissions and the parent directory does not
have an ACL, the client file mode is used to set standard UNIX file access permissions.
• If the request includes only standard UNIX file access permissions and the parent directory has a
noninheritable ACL, a default ACL based on the mode bits passed into the request is set on the new
object.
• If the request includes only standard UNIX file access permissions but the parent directory has an
ACL, the ACEs in the parent directory's ACL are inherited by the new file or directory as long as the
ACEs have been tagged with the appropriate inheritance flags.
Note: A parent ACL is inherited even if -v4.0-acl is set to off.

NFSv4 ACL behavior with umask and ACL inheritance

NFSv4 ACLs provide the ability to offer ACL inheritance. ACL inheritance means that files or folders
created beneath objects with NFSv4 ACLs set can inherit the ACLs based on the configuration of the ACL
inheritance flag.
Umask is used to control the permission level at which files and folders are created in a directory. For
more information, see the section called “Umask.”

46 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
By default, ONTAP allows umask to override inherited ACLs, which is expected behavior as per RFC
5661. To adjust the behavior ACL inheritance with umask, you can enable the option -v4-inherited-
acl-preserve.

ACL formatting
NFSv4.x ACLs have specific formatting. The following example is an ACE set on a file:
A::[email protected]:rwatTnNcCy

The preceding example follows the ACL format guidelines of:

type:flags:principal:permissions

A type of A means allow. The flags are not set in this case, because the principal is not a group and does
not include inheritance. Also, because the ACE is not an AUDIT entry, there is no need to set the audit
flags. For more information about NFSv4.x ACLs, see http://linux.die.net/man/5/nfs4_acl.
If an NFSv4.x ACL is not set properly, the ACL might not behave as expected, or the ACL change may
fail to apply and throw an error.
Sample errors include:
Failed setxattr operation: Invalid argument
Scanning ACE string 'A::user@rwaDxtTnNcCy' failed.

Explicit DENY
NFSv4 permissions can include explicit DENY attributes for OWNER, GROUP, and EVERYONE. That is
because NFSv4 ACLs are default-deny, which means that if an ACL is not explicitly granted by an ACE,
then it is denied. Explicit DENY attributes will override any ACCESS ACEs, explicit or not.
DENY ACEs are set with an attribute tag of D.
For example:
sh-4.1$ nfs4_getfacl /mixed
A::[email protected]:ratTnNcCy
A::OWNER@:rwaDxtTnNcCy
D::OWNER@:
A:g:GROUP@:rxtncy
D:g:GROUP@:waDTC
A::EVERYONE@:rxtncy
D::EVERYONE@:waDTC

DENY ACEs should be avoided whenever possible, because they can be confusing and complicated.
When DENY ACEs are set, users might be denied access when they expect to be granted access. This is
because the ordering of NFSv4 ACLs affects how they are evaluated.
The preceding set of ACEs is equivalent to 755 in mode bits, which means:
• The owner has full rights.
• Groups have read only.
• Others have read only.
However, even if permissions are adjusted to the 775 equivalent, access can be denied because of the
explicit DENY set on EVERYONE.
For an example of explicit DENY, see “NFSv4.x ACL Explicit DENY example.”

NFSv4 ACL preservation

47 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
By default, NFSv4 ACLs can be affected by setting mode bits on a file or folder. If an NFSv4 ACE has
been configured and a chmod is used, the ACE is removed. This is controlled through the v4-acl-
preserve option. For an example, see “NFSv4.x ACL preservation example” in this document.
Note: By default, this option is set to Enabled. NetApp recommends not modifying this option unless a
specific use case arises.

Mode bit display behavior from Windows created files with NFSv4 ACLs
In multiprotocol NAS environments (where both SMB and NFS are used to access the same data),
NFSv4 ACLs can create some undesirable behavior. In one such case, ONTAP 9.7 and earlier versions
would show “----------” for files created via SMB on NFS clients when NFSv4 ACLs are in use. ONTAP 9.8
and later introduces the is-inherit-modebits-with-nfsv4acl-enabled (defaults to disabled)
CIFS server option to resolve this issue. Set that option to enabled for proper mode bit display.
For more information, see bug 820848.

Preventing chmod on files and folders with NFSv4 ACLs present

In some cases, you might want to prevent chmod commands from working on any files or folders that
have NFSv4 ACLs present – even from the file owners. This is controlled with the -restrict-chmod-
acl option in ONTAP 9.8 (diag privilege). The default is unrestricted; to prevent chmods from being
allowed on these files and folders, set the option to Restricted.

NFSv4 delegations
NFSv4 introduces the concept of delegations that provide an aggressive local client cache, which is
different from the ad hoc caching that NFSv3 provides. There are two forms of delegations: read and
write. Delegations value cache correctness over improving performance. For delegations to work, a
supported UNIX client is required along with the NFS 4.x version-specific delegation options enabled on
the NetApp controller. These options are disabled by default.
When a server determines to delegate a complete file or part of the file to the client, the client caches it
locally and avoids additional RPC calls to the server. This reduces GETATTR calls in the case of read
delegations because there are fewer requests to the server to obtain the file’s information. However,
delegations do not cache metadata, which means that high file count workloads will not see as much of a
benefit with delegations as a streaming file workload might see.
Read delegations can be granted to numerous clients, but write delegations can be granted only to one
client at a time, as any new write to a file invalidates the delegation. The server reserves the right to recall
the delegation for any valid reason. The server determines to delegate the file under two scenarios: a
confirmed call-back path from the client that the server uses to recall a delegation if needed and when the
client sends an OPEN function for a file.

Why use read or write delegations?

Delegations can be used to improve the read and write performance of certain applications. For example,
web applications that have numerous readers of one or more files on the same client and across clients
that also generate copious amounts of metadata operations such as GETATTRs and LOOKUPs could
request read delegations from the storage system for local access to improve performance and response
time. Delegating the whole file or certain ranges of bytes to the client's local memory avoids additional
RPC calls over the wire for metadata operations.
If the file or byte offset is rewritten by any client during the delegation, the delegation is recalled. Although
this process is necessary to acquire updates, the delegation recall can affect read performance.
Therefore, write delegations should be used for single writer applications. Read and write delegations can
improve I/O performance, but that depends on the client hardware and operating system. For instance,
low-memory client platforms do not handle delegations very well.

48 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
How can I tell if I’m using delegations?
If you enable delegations and the client supports them, they will be used. You can verify that delegations
are being used by checking vserver locks show -type delegation.
cluster::*> vserver locks show -type delegation

Vserver: DEMO
Volume Object Path LIF Protocol Lock Type Client
-------- ------------------------- ----------- --------- ----------- ----------
flexgroup_16
/flexgroup_16/files/topdir_82/subdir_268/file3
data nfsv4.1 delegation -
Delegation Type: write
/flexgroup_16/files/topdir_27/subdir_249/file2
data nfsv4.1 delegation -
Delegation Type: write

You can also review delegations with performance statistics.

cluster::*> statistics show -object nfsv4_1 -counter *del*

Object: nfsv4_1
Instance: DEMO
Start-time: 4/9/2020 15:05:44
End-time: 4/9/2020 15:31:13
Elapsed-time: 1529s
Scope: cluster
Number of Constituents: 2 (complete_aggregation)
Counter Value
-------------------------------- --------------------------------
delegreturn_avg_latency 1366us
delegreturn_percent 4%
delegreturn_success 311465
delegreturn_total 311465

NFSv4 locking
For NFSv4 clients, Data ONTAP supports the NFSv4 file-locking mechanism, maintaining the state of all
file locks under a lease-based model. In accordance with RFC 3530, Data ONTAP "defines a single lease
period for all state held by an NFS client. If the client does not renew its lease within the defined period,
all state associated with the client's lease may be released by the server." The client can renew its lease
explicitly or implicitly by performing an operation, such as reading a file. Furthermore, Data ONTAP
defines a grace period, which is a period of special processing in which clients attempt to reclaim their
locking state during a server recovery.
Locks are issued by Data ONTAP to the clients on a lease basis. The server checks the lease on each
client by default every 30 seconds. In the case of a client reboot, the client can reclaim all the valid locks
from the server after it has restarted. If a server reboots, then upon restarting it does not issue any new
locks to the clients for a default grace period of 45 seconds (tunable in Data ONTAP to a maximum of 90
seconds). After that time the locks are issued to the requesting clients. The lease time of 30 seconds can
be tuned based on the application requirements. For information about managing NFS locks, see
Managing file locks in the product documentation.

Table 8) NFS lease and grace periods.

Term Definition*
Lease The time period in which Data ONTAP irrevocably grants a lock to a client
Grace period The time period in which clients attempt to reclaim their locking state from Data
ONTAP during server recovery
*For more information, see RFC 3530.

49 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Specifying the NFSv4 locking lease period
To specify the NFSv4 locking lease period (the time period in which Data ONTAP irrevocably grants a
lock to a client), you can modify the -v4-lease-seconds option. By default, this option is set to 30. The
minimum value for this option is 10. The maximum value for this option is the locking grace period, which
you can set with the locking.lease_seconds option.

NFSv4.x referrals
An NFS referral directs a client to another LIF in the SVM upon initial NFS mount request. The NFSv4.x
client uses this referral to direct its access over the referred path to the target LIF from that point forward.
Referrals are issued when there is a LIF in the SVM that resides on the node where the data volume
resides. In other words, if a cluster node receives an NFSv4.x request for a nonlocal volume, the cluster
node is able to refer the client to the local path for that volume by means of the LIF. Doing so allows
clients faster access to the data using a direct path and avoids extra traffic on the cluster network.

How they work

When a mount request is sent, the request acts as a normal NFSv4.x mount operation. However, after
the DH LOOKUP call is made, the server (NetApp cluster) responds with the GETFH status of
NFS4ERR_MOVED to notify the client that the volume being accessed does not live where the LIF being
requested lives. The server then sends a LOOKUP call to the client, notifying it of the IP (using the
fs_location4 value) on the node where the data volume lives. This process works regardless of
whether a client is mounting using a DNS name or IP. However, the client reports that it is mounted to the
IP specified rather than the IP returned to the client from the server.
If a volume moves to another aggregate on another node, the NFSv4.x clients must unmount and
remount the file system manually if volume locality is desired. Remounting makes sure that the client is
referred to the new location of the volume. If the manual mount/unmount process is not followed, the
client can still access the volume in its new location, but I/O requests would then take a remote path.
However, remote I/O requests might not be impactful enough to an environment to matter enough to
remount clients, which is a disruptive and potentially involved operation. The decision to remount clients
should be made on a case-by-case basis.
Note: NFSv4.x referrals were introduced in RHEL as early as 5.1 (2.6.18-53), but NetApp recommends
using no kernel older than 2.6.25 with NFS referrals and no version earlier than 1.0.12 of nfs-utils.
If a volume is junctioned below other volumes, the referral uses the volume being mounted to refer to as
the local volume. For example:
• A client wants to mount vol2
• Vol2’s junction is /vol1/vol2
• Vol1 lives on node1; vol2 lives on node2
• A mount is made to cluster:/vol1/vol2
• The referral returns the IP address of a LIF that lives on node2, regardless of what IP address is
returned from DNS for the host name cluster
• The mount uses the LIF local to vol2 on node2
In a mixed client environment, if any of the clients do not support referrals, then the -v4.0-referrals
option should not be enabled. If the option is enabled and a clients that does not support referrals gets a
referral from the server, that client is unable to access the volume and experiences failures. For more
information about referrals, see RFC 3530.

NFSv4.x stateless migration – Oracle dNFS

NFSv4 referrals also brought NFSv4 stateless migration support in ONTAP 8.1 and later and includes
support only for Oracle dNFS.

50 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Migration is an NFSv4.x feature that allows a file system to move from one server to another without client
disruption. Migration enablement requires enabling referrals and the option -v4-fsid-change on the
NFS server. Migration is a diag-level option. Enabling migration assumes the following about the solution:
• All clients accessing the NFSv4.x server on the SVM are stateless.
• All clients accessing the NFSv4.x server on the SVM support migrations.
• The NFSv4.x clients do not use the following:
− Locking
− Share reservations
− Delegations
− OPEN for file access
• The NFSv4.x clients do use the following:
− READ, WRITE, and SETATTR with special stateid of all bits 0
− OPEN only to create a file and close it right away
• The NFSv4.x clients do not have a state established on the NFS server.
NFS migration support can be useful in the following scenarios in ONTAP:
• Volume moves
• LIF migration/failover

Table 9) Referrals versus migration versus pNFS.

Referrals Stateless migration pNFS
When does redirect At mount Any operation I/O only (read, write)
take place? (I/O and metadata)
Traffic that is All traffic All traffic I/O only (read, write)
redirected
Use case Automounter Oracle dNFS Guaranteed data locality for I/O
Drawback Only on mount Only stateless operations Non-I/O traffic is not redirected
(no lock state)

Snapshot copies with NFSv4.x

In NFSv3, the .snapshot directory is visible to clients by default. (For information about hiding the
.snapshot directory in NFSv3, see “Hiding Snapshot copies.”) Because NFSv4.x does not use the
MOUNT protocol, the .snapshot directory is not visible. However, it is accessible from anywhere in the
NFSv4.x mount.
To access Snapshot copies using NFSv4.x, simply navigate to the .snapshot directory manually.
# ls -la /nfs3 | grep snapshot
drwxrwxrwx 16 root root 4096 Mar 31 14:05 .snapshot

# ls -la /nfs4 | grep snapshot

#
# ls -la /nfs4/.snapshot
total 64
drwxrwxrwx 16 root root 4096 Mar 31 14:05 .
drwxr-xr-x 14 root root 4096 Apr 11 2018 ..
drwx--x--x 8 root daemon 4096 Jan 19 2017 base
drwxrwxrwx 11 root root 4096 Jul 10 2017 clone_home_clone.0
drwxr-xr-x 14 root root 4096 Apr 11 2018 daily.2020-03-30_0010
drwxr-xr-x 14 root root 4096 Apr 11 2018 daily.2020-03-31_0010
drwxr-xr-x 14 root root 4096 Apr 11 2018 hourly.2020-03-31_0905
drwxr-xr-x 14 root root 4096 Apr 11 2018 hourly.2020-03-31_1005

51 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
NFSv4.x behavior with load-sharing mirrors
Load-sharing mirrors in ONTAP are read-only copies of volumes that are replicated through SnapMirror
(with the load sharing type specified) to multiple nodes in a cluster to provide resiliency for volumes. Load
sharing mirrors are not supported for use with data volumes, but instead are used to protect the SVM root
volume, which contains the root of the namespace. This is covered in more detail in “Protecting your
namespace.”
However, NFSv4.x operations do not leverage load-sharing mirror destinations when mounting volumes
and instead will use the source volume file handle. As a result, load-sharing mirrors don’t provide
protection against SVM root volume failures.

NFSv4.1
NFSv4.1 is considered a minor version update of NFSv4. This section covers NFSv4.1 specifics. The
previous section covered NFSv4.0, as well as topics that apply to both NFSv4.0 and NFSv4.1 (denoted
by NFSv4.x in this document).
It is possible to enable NFSv4.1 and disable NFSv4.0. This is recommended if you wish to prevent clients
from using NFSv4.0 for any reason.
To mount a client using NFSv4.1, there must be client support for NFSv4.1. Check with the client vendor
for support for NFSv4.1. Mounting NFSv4.1 is generally done with the minorversion mount option, but
newer Linux kernels will autonegotiate the highest supported NFS version.
Example:
# mount -o nfsvers=4,minorversion=1 NFSSERVER:/unix /unix

NFSv4.1 features
NFSv4.1 introduced a number of new features to the NFSv4 protocol standard, as covered in RFC-5661.
These differences are covered in Section 1.8 of the RFC.
Some features are listed as Required, which means that the feature must be implemented in/supported
by the NFS server to claim RFC standard. Other features are listed as Recommended or Optional
features and are supported ad hoc by the NFS server, but are not required to claim RFC compliance. For
example, pNFS is listed as an Optional feature for NFSv4.1 and is supported by ONTAP, but NFS
session trunking and directory delegations (also Optionals features) are not currently supported by
ONTAP.

Parallel network file system

Parallel NFS (pNFS) is a part of NFS version 4.1 standards. With traditional NFS versions 3, 4, and 4.1,
the metadata and data shared the same I/O path. pNFS handles metadata and data on different I/O
paths. A metadata server (MDS) handles all the metadata activities from the client, while the data servers
provide a direct path for data access.
As explained in RFC 5661:
“Parallel data access is controlled by recallable objects known as ‘layouts,’ which are integrated into
the protocol locking model. Clients direct requests for data access to a set of data servers specified
by the layout using a data storage protocol which may be NFSv4.1 or may be another protocol.”
For pNFS, NetApp supports all clients that support pNFS and follow the RFC specifications. By default,
the pNFS option is enabled, but it is only active if NFSv4.1 support also is enabled.

52 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
How pNFS works
pNFS defines the notion of a device that is generated by the server (that is, an NFS server running on
Data ONTAP) and sent to the client. This process helps the client locate the data and send requests
directly over the path local to that data. Data ONTAP generates one pNFS device per flexible volume.
The metadata path does not change, so metadata requests might still be remote. In a Data ONTAP pNFS
implementation, every data LIF is considered an NFS server, so pNFS only works if each node owns at
least one data LIF per NFS SVM. Doing otherwise negates the benefits of pNFS, which is data locality
regardless of which IP address a client connects to. For information on the behavior of pNFS when a data
LIF goes down, see “pNFS and LIF outages.”
The pNFS device contains information about the following:
• Volume constituents
• Network location of the constituents
The device information is cached to the local node for improved performance.
To see pNFS devices in the cluster, run the following command in advanced privilege:
cluster::> set diag
cluster::*> vserver nfs pnfs devices cache show

pNFS components
There are three main components of pNFS:
• MDS:
− Handles all nondata traffic such as GETATTR, SETATTR, and so on
− Responsible for maintaining metadata that informs the clients of the file locations
− Located on the NetApp NFS server
• Data server:
− Stores file data and responds to read and write requests
− Located on the NetApp NFS server
− Inode information also resides here
• Clients
These components leverage three different protocols. The control protocol is the way the metadata and
data servers stay in sync. The pNFS protocol is used between clients and the MDS. pNFS supports file,
block, and object-based storage protocols, but NetApp currently only supports file-based pNFS.

53 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Figure 8) pNFS data workflow.

How can I tell pNFS is being used?

To verify whether pNFS is in use, you can run statistics counters to check for
pnfs_layout_conversions counters. If the number of pnfs_layout_conversions are
incrementing, then pNFS is in use.
cluster::*> statistics show -object nfsv4_1_diag -counter pnfs_layout_conversions

Object: nfsv4_1_diag
Instance: nfs4_1_diag
Start-time: 4/9/2020 16:29:50
End-time: 4/9/2020 16:31:03
Elapsed-time: 73s
Scope: node1

Counter Value
-------------------------------- --------------------------------
pnfs_layout_conversions 4053

For basic comparison testing of pNFS with NFSv3 and NFSv4.x, see “Performance examples for different
TCP maximum transfer Window sizes.”
Note: When using pNFS, be sure to use the latest available client and ONTAP release to avoid bugs,
such as this one: SU323: Data corruption possible during pNFS I/O on Linux distributions.

How to blacklist clients

When you enable pNFS on the NFS server, any client that mounts using NFSv4.1 and later will leverage
pNFS. In some cases, you might only want those clients to use basic NFSv4.x and not pNFS.
You can see if pNFS is in use on the client when an NFSv4.1 mount is established with the following
command. You will see nfs_layout_nfsv41_files listed if pNFS is in use.
# lsmod | grep nfs
nfs_layout_nfsv41_files 32768 1
nfsv4 790528 3 nfs_layout_nfsv41_files
dns_resolver 16384 2 cifs,nfsv4
nfsv3 49152 1
nfs_acl 16384 1 nfsv3
nfs 360448 5 nfsv4,nfs_layout_nfsv41_files,nfsv3
lockd 122880 2 nfsv3,nfs

54 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
fscache 385024 2 nfsv4,nfs
sunrpc 479232 28
nfsv4,auth_rpcgss,lockd,nfs_layout_nfsv41_files,nfsv3,rpcsec_gss_krb5,nfs_acl,nfs

You can blacklist specific clients from using pNFS by blacklisting the pNFS module
nfs_layout_nfsv41_files from loading on the client in the /etc/modprobe.d/
nfs_layout_nfsv41_files-blacklist.conf file.
For example:
cat /etc/modprobe.d/nfs_layout_nfsv41_files-blacklist.conf
blacklist nfs_layout_nfsv41_files

Note: A reboot is required for the change to take effect.

To view the modules and verify the module is disabled/not loading when an NFSv4.1 mount is
established:
# lsmod | grep nfs
nfsv4 584056 3
dns_resolver 13140 1 nfsv4
nfs 262045 16 nfsv4
fscache 64980 2 nfs,nfsv4
nfsd 351321 13
auth_rpcgss 59415 2 nfsd,rpcsec_gss_krb5
nfs_acl 12837 1 nfsd
lockd 98048 2 nfs,nfsd
grace 13515 2 nfsd,lockd
sunrpc 358543 46 nfs,nfsd,rpcsec_gss_krb5,auth_rpcgss,lockd,nfsv4,nfs_acl

For more information about blacklisting modules, see How do I prevent a kernel module from loading
automatically?

NFSv4.1 delegations
NFSv4.1 delegations are very similar to NFSv4.0 delegations, but are part of the v4.1 protocol rather than
v4.0. Table 10 covers the new additions to NFSv4.1 and how they benefit an environment over NFSv4.0.
These additions are covered in detail in RFC 5661, Section 10.2.

Table 10) NFSv4.1 delegation benefits.

NFSv4.1 delegation feature Benefit versus NFSv4.0 delegation
EXCHANGE_ID is used In NFSv4.0, SETCLIENTID was used. EXCHANGE_ID
replaces SETCLIENTID and enables a client ID to be
assigned before any other client operations take place.
As per RFC 5661, "The only NFSv4.1 operations possible
before a client ID is established are those needed to
establish the client ID.”
Callbacks use the same TCP connection as the In NFSv4.0, callbacks use different TCP connections than
forechannel the forechannel. Using the same TCP connection for
callbacks provides better performance for delegations
and is more firewall friendly.
New OPEN request options: NFSv4.1 provides more precise control to clients for
• OPEN4_SHARE_ACCESS_WANT_DELEG_M acquisition of delegations than NFSv4.0. These new
ASK options enable more OPEN scenarios to be covered to
prevent problems issuing or reclaiming delegations.
• OPEN4_SHARE_ACCESS_WANT_NO_PREF
ERENCE
• OPEN4_SHARE_ACCESS_WANT_READ_DE
LEG

55 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
 NFSv4.1 delegation feature Benefit versus NFSv4.0 delegation
• OPEN4_SHARE_ACCESS_WANT_WRITE_D
ELEG
• OPEN4_SHARE_ACCESS_WANT_ANY_DEL
EG
• OPEN4_SHARE_ACCESS_WANT_NO_DELE
G

NFSv4.1 sessions
As per RFC 5661:
A session is a dynamically created, long-lived server object created by a client and used over time
from one or more transport connections. Its function is to maintain the server's state relative to the
connection(s) belonging to a client instance. This state is entirely independent of the connection itself,
and indeed the state exists whether or not the connection exists. A client may have one or more
sessions associated with it so that client-associated state may be accessed using any of the sessions
associated with that client's client ID, when connections are associated with those sessions. When no
connections are associated with any of a client ID's sessions for an extended time, such objects as
locks, opens, delegations, layouts, and so on, are subject to expiration. The session serves as an
object representing a means of access by a client to the associated client state on the server,
independent of the physical means of access to that state.
A single client may create multiple sessions. A single session MUST NOT serve multiple clients.
From SNIA:
Sessions NFSv4.1 has brought two major pieces of functionality: sessions and pNFS. Sessions bring
the advantages of correctness and simplicity to NFS semantics. In order to improve the correctness
of NFSv4, NFSv4.1 sessions introduce “exactly-once” semantics. This is important for supporting
operations that were non-idempotent (that is, operations that if executed twice or more return different
results, for example the file RENAME operation). Making such operations idempotent is a significant
practical problem when the file system and the storage are separated by a potentially unreliable
communications link, as is the case with NFS. Servers maintain one or more session states in
agreement with the client; a session maintains the server's state relative to the connections belonging
to a client. Clients can be assured that their requests to the server have been executed, and that they
will never be executed more than once. Sessions extend the idea of NFSv4 delegations, which
introduced server-initiated asynchronous callbacks; clients can initiate session requests for
connections to the server. For WAN based systems, this simplifies operations through firewalls.

NFSv4.1 session trunking

Data ONTAP’s NFSv4.1 server currently does not offer support for the session trunking (or multipathing)
feature. This feature is commonly asked for in VMware environments.

NFSv4.2
NFSv4.2 is the latest NFSv4.x version available and is covered in RFC-7862. ONTAP 9.8 introduced
basic support for the NFSv4.2 protocol. ONTAP 9.9 added support for labeled NFS, but no other ancillary
features are currently supported. NFSv4.2 does not have an independent option to enable/disable it, but it
is enabled/disabled when you enable NFSv4.1 via the -v4.1 NFS server option in ONTAP. If a client
supports NFSv4.2, it negotiates the highest supported version of NFS during the mount command if not
specified. Otherwise, use the minorversion=2 mount option. There is no difference in performance
between NFSv4.1 and NFSv4.2.

56 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Labeled NFS 4.2
ONTAP 9.9.1 introduces support for the NFSv4.2 feature called labeled NFS, which is a way to manage
granular file and folder access by using SELinux labels and Mandatory Access Control (MAC). These
MAC labels are stored with files and folders and they work in conjunction with UNIX permissions and
NFSv4.x ACLs. You can enable and disable this feature with the following advanced privilege option:
[-v4.2-seclabel {enabled|disabled}] - NFSV4.2 Security Label Support (privilege: advanced)
This optional parameter specifies whether to enable security labels for NFSv4.2. The default
setting is disabled at the time of creation.

Support for labeled NFS means that ONTAP now recognizes and understands the NFS client’s SELinux
label settings.
Labeled NFS is covered in RFC-7204.
Use cases include:
• MAC labeling of virtual machine (VM) images
• Data security classification for the public sector (secret, top secret, and so on)
• Security compliance
• Diskless Linux
In this release, ONTAP supports the following enforcement modes:
• Limited Server Mode. ONTAP cannot enforce the labels, but can store and transmit them.
Note: The ability to change MAC labels is also up to the client to enforce.
• Guest Mode. If the client is not labeled NFS-aware (v4.1 or lower), MAC labels are not transmitted.
ONTAP does not currently support Full Mode (storing and enforcing MAC labels).

Name services
In enterprise NAS environments, thousands of clients, users, and groups are interacting with storage
systems every day. These clients, users, and groups require easy management that is consistent across
all NAS clients. User1 in client A should not be different than user1 in client B, and client A and client B
should not use the same host names or IP addresses.
That’s where name services come in.

DNS
DNS servers provide a centralized way to create and manage IP addresses, host names, and business-
critical service records. When all clients and storage systems point to the same DNS configurations, then
there is consistency in host name <-> IP mapping without the need to manage thousands of local files.
DNS is critical in many applications and network services, such as:
• Kerberos
• LDAP
• Active Directory
Use of DNS in NFS environments is highly recommended – especially when Kerberos and LDAP are
involved.

57 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Dynamic DNS
In DNS, it’s possible to have clients send DNS updates to the DNS servers when IP addresses are
added, deleted, or modified. This feature reduces the amount of management overhead required for
DNS, but is only possible if the DNS server supports it.
ONTAP provides a method for data LIFs to send updates to DNS servers via dynamic DNS. This is
managed with the vserver services name-service dns dynamic-update commands.

DNS load balancing

In some cases, a host name might not just be a single IP address, but might be a front-end for multiple IP
addresses. In ONTAP, an SVM might have multiple data LIFs. NFS clients generally access these
network interfaces with a DNS host name that load balances connections across the multiple IP
addresses. ONTAP supports a few methods to load balance connections with DNS:
• Off-box DNS (round-robin through A records)
• On-box DNS (DNS forwarding/delegation to the ONTAP DNS server)
• Third-party load balancer (hardware or software gateway)

On-box DNS or off-box DNS?

ONTAP provides a method to service DNS queries through an on-box DNS server. This method factors in
a node’s CPU and throughput to help determine which available data LIF is the best one to service NAS
access requests:
• Off-box DNS is configured by way of the DNS administrator creating multiple A name records with the
same name on an external DNS server that provides round-robin access to data LIFs.
• For workloads that create mount-storm scenarios, the ONTAP on-box DNS server cannot keep up
and balance properly, so it’s preferable to use off-box DNS.
For more information, see TR-4523: DNS Load Balancing in ONTAP.

Identity management name services

For identity management, LDAP and NIS provide a central repository for users and groups, as well as
netgroup functionality. These centralized services offer a way for clients and servers to maintain the same
information to ensure predictable, consistent identities when accessing NAS file systems.
ONTAP supports both LDAP and NIS for name services, but LDAP is recommended over NIS for its
security and replication support.

LDAP
The recommended method for identity management for users, groups, and netgroups is to use a LDAP
server. Not only does LDAP centralize the source for name services across NFS clients and servers, it
also provides a way to secure communication via secure binds and searches using SSL or Kerberos to
encrypt the LDAP packets. NIS servers don’t offer support for this by default.
Additionally, LDAP servers offer easier ways to replicate their information across multiple servers –
particularly when using Active Directory for UNIX identity management. For more information about
setting up LDAP for use with ONTAP NAS environments, see TR-4835: How to Configure LDAP in
ONTAP.

58 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
NIS
NIS databases can also be used for users, groups, and netgroup name services with ONTAP. ONTAP
uses the standard NIS *.byname functionality for lookups using ypserv calls. Any NIS server that
leverages standard NIS functionality can be used for lookups – including Windows Active Directory.
ONTAP can also enable local NIS group.byname and netgroup.byname functionality (similar to NIS slave)
for chatty NIS environments. This helps reduce the overall load on the network and NIS servers when
enabled.

Local files
Local files (such as passwd, group and netgroup) are also supported as name service sources. With
ONTAP, a storage administrator can either build the files with ONTAP commands, through the UI (UNIX
user and group creation), or they can import flat files from servers by using the load-from-uri
commands. By default, ONTAP SVMs support up to 64,000 entries for local UNIX users and groups.
If local files are going to be the primary name service and there will need to be more than 64,000 entries,
then enabling scaled/file-only mode would be an option.

Scaled mode/file-only mode

Scaled mode/file-only mode for local users and groups in ONTAP 9.1 and later allows storage
administrators to expand the limits of local users and groups by enabling a diag-level name service option
and then using the load-from-uri functionality to load files into the cluster to provide larger numbers of
users and groups. Scaled mode/file-only mode can also add performance improvements to name service
lookups, because there is no longer a need to have external dependencies on name service servers,
networks, and so on. However, this performance comes at the expense of ease of management of the
name services, because file management adds overhead to the storage management and introduces
more potential for human error. Additionally, local file management must be done per cluster, adding an
extra layer of complexity.
To enable this option for users and groups, run the vserver services name-service unix-user
file-only and vserver services name-service unix-group file-only commands.
After the mode is enabled, run the following command to load the user and group file from URI:
cluster::*> vserver services name-service unix-user load-from-uri

Note: If loading files larger than 10MB for users and 25MB for groups, use the –skip-file-size-
check option.
When using file-only mode, individual operations on users and groups are not allowed. This configuration
is not currently supported in NetApp MetroCluster or SVM disaster recovery (SVM DR) scenarios.

Can you still use external name services when using file-only mode?
File-only mode does not mean you cannot use LDAP or NIS as a name service; it means that the local
users and groups are managed with files only (as opposed to replicated database entries). LDAP and NIS
lookups will still work properly when file-only mode is enabled.

Default local users

When an SVM is created by using a vServer setup or System Manager, the default local UNIX users and
groups are created, along with default UIDs and GIDs.
The following example shows these users and groups:
cluster::> vserver services unix-user show -vserver vs0
User User Group Full

59 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Vserver Name ID ID Name
-------------- --------------- ------ ------ --------------------------------
nfs nobody 65535 65535 -
nfs pcuser 65534 65534 -
nfs root 0 0 -

cluster::> vserver services unix-group show -vserver vs0

Vserver Name ID
-------------- ------------------- ----------
nfs daemon 1
nfs nobody 65535
nfs pcuser 65534
nfs root 0

Note: When using file-only mode, be sure the preceding users exist in the files being used to manage
the cluster. After file-only mode is enabled, the default users are removed if the uploaded file
does not include them.

Local user impact

When file-only mode is enabled, the default local users of root, pcuser, and nobody are removed if the
file being loaded does not have the users. Be sure to include the local users and groups in your
passwd/group files when using file-only mode.

Limits
The following section covers the limits for using local users and groups in ONTAP. These limits are
cluster-wide.

Table 11) Limits on local users and groups in ONTAP.

Local UNIX users/groups Scaled-mode users/groups
Local users and groups 65,536 Users: 400,000
maximum entries Groups: 15,000
Group memberships: 3,000
SVMs: 6
Scaled-mode users and groups Not applicable Passwd file size (users): 10MB*
maximum file sizes Group file size: 25MB*

*Group and passwd file sizes can be

overridden with –skip-file-
size-check but larger file sizes
have not been tested.

As previously mentioned, the local UNIX user and group limits are cluster-wide and affect clusters with
multiple SVMs. Thus, if a cluster has four SVMs, then the maximum number of users in each SVM must
add up to the maximum limit set on the cluster.
For example:
• SVM1 has 2,000 local UNIX users.
• SVM2 has 40,000 local UNIX users.
• SVM3 has 20 local UNIX users.
• SVM4 would then have 23,516 local UNIX users available to be created.
Any attempted creation of any UNIX user or group beyond the limit would result in an error message.
For example:
cluster::> unix-group create -vserver NAS -name test -id 12345

60 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Error: command failed: Failed to add "test" because the system limit of {limit number}
"local unix groups and members" has been reached.

Multiprotocol NAS
ONTAP supports multiprotocol NAS access to the same datasets in an SVM. With ONTAP multiprotocol
NAS access, users and groups can use CIFS/SMB and NFS to access volumes or qtrees and leverage
ACLs for users and groups, along with setting file and folder ownership as desired. For details on
multiprotocol NAS, see TR-4887: Multiprotocol NAS in ONTAP – Overview and Best Practices.

Qtrees
Qtrees allow a storage administrator to create folders from the ONTAP UI or CLI to provide logical
separation of data within a volume. Qtrees provide flexibility in data management by enabling unique
export policies, unique security styles, quotas, and granular statistics.
Qtrees have multiple use cases and are useful for home directory workloads because qtrees can be
named to reflect the user names of users accessing data, and dynamic shares can be created to provide
access based on a username.
The following list provides more information about qtrees in FlexGroup volumes:
• Qtrees appear as directories to clients.
• Qtrees can be created at the volume level; you cannot currently create qtrees below directories to
create qtrees that are subdirectories.
• Qtrees are created and managed the same way as a FlexVol qtree is managed.
• Qtrees cannot be replicated using SnapMirror. Currently, SnapMirror only performed at the volume
level. If you want more granular replication with a volume, use junction paths.
• A maximum of 4,995 qtrees is supported per volume. Quota monitoring and enforcement
(enforcement in ONTAP 9.5 and later for FlexGroup volumes) can be applied at the qtree or user
level.

Qtrees and file moves

A qtree is considered a unique file system in ONTAP. Although it looks like a directory from a NAS client
perspective, some operations might behave differently than if it were an actual directory. One example of
that is moving a file between qtrees in the same volume.
When a file move is performed in a volume across directories, the file is simply renamed to a new name,
and the file moves happens within seconds because the move is inside of the same file system.
When a file move occurs between two qtrees, the file is copied to the new location rather than being
renamed. This causes the operation to take much longer.
This is a behavior that occurs whether the qtree lives in a FlexVol or a FlexGroup volume.

Qtree IDs and rename behavior

After a noninherited export policy is applied to a qtree, NFS file handles change slightly when dealing with
operations between qtrees. ONTAP validates qtree IDs in NFS operations, which affect things such as file
renames and moves when moving to or from a qtree in the same volume as the source folder or qtree.
This is considered a security feature, which helps prevent unwanted access across qtrees, such as in
home directory scenarios. However, simply applying export policy rules and permissions can achieve
similar goals.

61 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
For example, a move or rename to or from a qtree in the same volume results in an Access Denied error.
The same move or rename to or from a qtree in a different volume results in the file being copied. With
larger files, the copy behavior can make it seem like a move operation is taking an unusually long time,
whereas most move operations are near-instantaneous because they are simple file renames when in the
same file system or volume.
This behavior is controlled by the advanced privilege option and is covered in detail in the NetApp
Knowledge Base article Permission denied while moving files between qtrees when NFS option '-validate-
qtree-export' is enabled.
From the Knowledge Base article, these are the behaviors of different operations.
Assuming that file permissions allow and that client is allowed by export policies to access both
source and destination volume/qtree, these are the current permutations with the 'validate-qtree-
export' flag enabled or disabled:

Enabled:
- Rename in same volume and qtree: SUCCESS
- Rename in same volume, different qtrees: EACCESS
- Rename between volumes where qtree IDs differ: EACCESS
- Rename between volumes where qtree IDs match: XDEV

Disabled:
- Rename in same volume and qtree: SUCCESS
- Rename in same volume, different qtrees: SUCCESS
- Rename between volumes where qtree IDs differ: XDEV
- Rename between volumes where qtree IDs match: XDEV

Note: NFS3ERR_XDEV and NFS3ERR_ACCESS are defined in RFC-1813.

To change the behavior of renames and moves across qtrees, modify -validate-qtree-export to
disabled. For more information, see Validating qtree IDs for qtree file operations.
Note: There is no known negative effect caused by disabling the -validate-qtree-export option,
outside of allowing renames across qtrees.

File handle effect for qtree exports

Normally, the NFS export file handles that are handed out to clients are 32 bytes or less in size. However,
with qtree exports, an extra few bytes are added to create 40-byte file handles. In most clients, this is not
an issue, but older clients (such as HPUX 10.20, introduced in 1996) might have problems mounting
these exports. Be sure to test older client connectivity in a separate test SVM before enabling qtree
exports, because there is currently no means to change the file handle behavior after qtree exports have
been enabled.

Mounting multiple Qtrees in the same volume on the same NFS client
Although qtrees effectively act as independent file systems, if they live in the same volume, then the NFS
conversation between client and server involves the same MSID/file handle from the parent volume. This
can result in the NFS client seeing the qtrees as the same file system mounted twice, and the used space
is the same regardless of what is actually being used in each qtree.
For example, these two qtrees are mounted to the same client at different mount points.
# mount | grep qtree
10.193.67.214:/testvol/qtree1 on /mnt/qtree1 type nfs
10.193.67.214:/testvol/qtree2 on /mnt/qtree2 type nfs

They both show the same space usage before we copy a file.
# df -h | grep qtree
10.193.67.214:/testvol/qtree1 973G 2.0M 973G 1% /mnt/qtree1
10.193.67.214:/testvol/qtree2 973G 2.0M 973G 1% /mnt/qtree2

62 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Then we copy a 3.8GB file to qtree1. Both qtrees show the same space used.
# cp debian-8.2.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso /mnt/qtree1/
# df -h | grep qtree
10.193.67.214:/testvol/qtree1 973G 3.8G 970G 1% /mnt/qtree1
10.193.67.214:/testvol/qtree2 973G 3.8G 970G 1% /mnt/qtree2

We can get around this by applying a simple monitoring quota to one of the qtrees. Just by doing this, the
proper space usage is seen.
cluster::*> quota report -vserver NFS
Vserver: NFS

----Disk---- ----Files----- Quota

Volume Tree Type ID Used Limit Used Limit Specifier
------- -------- ------ ------- ----- ----- ------ ------ ---------
testvol qtree1 tree 1
3.73GB - 2 - qtree1
testvol qtree2 tree 2 0B - 1 - qtree2
testvol tree * 0B - 0 - *

# df -h | grep qtree
10.193.67.214:/testvol/qtree1 973G 3.8G 970G 1% /mnt/qtree1
10.193.67.214:/testvol/qtree2 970G 0 970G 0% /mnt/qtree2

Subdirectory exports
Qtrees can be exported through NFS, which provides a single-level subdirectory path to define unique
export policies and rules for clients. However, individual directories cannot have export policies and rules
applied to them, and qtrees currently can only be created at the volume level in ONTAP. If your
environment requires exports lower in the directory tree, a combination of volumes, qtrees, and junction
paths can be used to simulate subdirectory exports. However, this does not secure the entire path,
because each level in the junction path has to allow read access to the export policy rules for the clients
to allow traversal.
For example, you could create a subdirectory export like this:
/volume1/qtree1/volume2/qtree2/volume3/qtree3

Each object in this path can be exported to the NFS clients with unique policies and rules. If you need
greater levels of security for these folders, consider using NTFS security styles/ACLs or Kerberos for
NFS.

User and group owners

Starting in ONTAP 9.8, you can set the user and group owner of a qtree from the ONTAP CLI with qtree
create or qtree modify. In previous releases, this was done through the NAS protocol from a client.
This is currently only available through the CLI or a REST API. There is no ZAPI or ONTAP System
Manager support.
[ -user <user name> ] User ID
[ -group <group name> ] Group ID

Nondisruptive operations with NFS

This section covers nondisruptive operations (NDO) with NFS in ONTAP and scenarios with NDO
behavior for NFS clients. In some cases, even NFSv3 can be disrupted by specific planned and
unplanned events. The reason for this occurrence is that even though NFSv3 is a stateless protocol,
there are still underlying mechanisms such as locking and NFS server-side caches that can come into
play during disruptive events.

63 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Replay/reply cache
The replay (or reply) cache in ONTAP is crucial to preventing NFS requests from trying nonidempotent
requests twice. Nonidempotent requests are requests that can change data structures. For example,
reading a document twice at the same time is an idempotent operation because it’s harmless. Editing that
document twice at the same time is a nonidempotent operation and can be harmful if the document
doesn’t have locking in place to protect it. The replay/reply cache in ONTAP helps keep track of which
operations have arrived on the storage in case a network issue causes a client to resend the same
operation. The cache is used to reply to the operation rather than retrying in the storage layer.
This cache is stored at the data layer with the volumes. When this cache is lost, CREATE operations can
fail with E_EXIST and REMOVE operations can fail with E_NOENT. Table 12 shows different scenarios in
which replay cache is kept or lost, which determines the disruptiveness of the operation.

Table 12) Replay/reply cache NDO behavior.

Operation Result (NFSv3 and NFSv4.x)
Volume move Replay cache is moved with volume.
Aggregate relocation or storage giveback operation Replay cache is lost.
LIF migrate (same node) Replay cache remains intact.
LIF migrate (different node) Replay cache is lost.
Unplanned takeover Replay cache is lost.
Planned takeover Replay cache is lost.

File locking
File locking mechanisms were created to prevent a file from being accessed for write operations by more
than one user or application at a time. NFS leverages file locking either using the NLM process in NFSv3
or by leasing and locking, which is built in to the NFSv4.x protocols. Not all applications leverage file
locking, however; for example, the application “vi” does not lock files. Instead, it uses a file swap method
to save changes to a file.
When an NFS client requests a lock, the client interacts with the ONTAP system to save the lock state.
Where the lock state is stored depends on the NFS version being used. In NFSv3, the lock state is stored
at the data layer. In NFSv4.x, the lock states are stored in the NAS protocol stack.
In NFSv3 environments, locks are managed by the NLM protocol, which is ancillary to the NFS protocol.
As a result, when locks are used in NFSv3, there might be stale locks left over after failovers that need to
be cleaned up manually. NFSv4.x locks are reclaimed based on a lease model and do not need manual
cleanup. For more information about NFS file locking, see “File locking concepts.”
To view or remove file locks in an SVM, run the following commands in Advanced Privilege:
cluster::> set advanced
cluster::*> vserver locks
break show

When potentially disruptive operations occur, lock states do not transfer in some instances. As a result,
delays in NFS operations can occur as the locks are reclaimed by the clients and reestablished with their
new locations. Table 13covers the scenarios in which locks are kept or lost.

Table 13) Lock state NDO behavior.

Operation NFSv3 result NFSv4.x result
Volume move Lock state is moved with volume. Lock state is moved with volume.

64 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
 Operation NFSv3 result NFSv4.x result
Aggregate relocation or Lock state is not moved; up to 45s Lock state is not moved; up to 90s
storage giveback operation outage when locks are in use. outage when locks are in use.
LIF migrate (same node) Lock state is not stored in NAS protocol Lock state remains intact; still on
stack; no disruption. local node; no disruption.
LIF migrate (different node) Lock state is not stored in NAS protocol Lock state is not moved; up to 90s
stack; nothing to move; no disruption. outage when locks are in use.
Unplanned takeover Lock state is not moved; up to 45s Lock state is not moved; up to 90s
outage when locks are in use. outage when locks are in use.
Planned takeover Lock state is not moved; up to 45s Lock state is not moved; up to 90s
outage when locks are in use. outage when locks are in use.

Impact of NFSv4.x locks on failover scenarios

In failover scenarios (planned, unplanned or testing), you might notice that there is a noticeable pause in
client I/O when NFSv4.x is in use. This pause is normal, because the lock states are being negotiated to
maintain coherency and ensure that other clients aren’t able to lock files that are already in use, which
can result in unwanted writes to files.
This protocol-specific pause can take upwards of 45–90 seconds, which is untenable in some production
environments. This pause is caused by a grace period, where NFS locks remain intact until the grace
period times out or the client/server communication resumes.
This is covered in How does the NFSv4 grace periods work?
The grace period in ONTAP is active in two separate areas of the storage architecture and is set to 45
seconds by default:
• Network. When a data LIF is moved to another node (either manually or through port failure), the
grace period for lock reclamation is set by the NFS server option -v4-grace-seconds. Because
this is set at the NFS server level, all NFSv4.x operations to the SVM are affected.
• Data/WAFL. When a storage failover event occurs, the grace period for lock reclamation is set by the
node-level option locking.grace_lease_seconds. Because this is set at the node level, this
affects all NFSv4.x operations to that node. This option should be set on all nodes participating in
data access using NFSv4.x.
In most instances, NetApp does not recommend lowering the grace period values, for the following
reasons:
• The default value of 45 seconds helps ensure NFSv4.x clients have enough time to reclaim locks
before resuming I/O. Currently, the data layer (for storage failovers) does not have the ability to break
out of the default grace period before the timer runs out, even if all clients have sent
RECLAIM_COMPLETE to the storage system. Bug 1392916 has been opened for this issue to
enhance the failover logic for lock reclamation.
• If the grace period values are tuned too low, there is a risk that another client may try to write to the
same file or byte-range that was previously locked, which can result in file corruption.
− For single write workloads (where there is no risk of other clients trying to write to a locked file),
lowering the grace periods doesn’t present the same type of risk as workloads where multiple
clients may be writing to a file at any given time.
• Reclaim times can vary depending on the number of locks and clients. In environments with many
locks/clients, reclaims take longer than environments with fewer locks/clients. The number of
clients/locks are a factor in how low you can safely set the grace period values.
However, if you need to modify the grace period for data LIF failover operations, run the following
command:

65 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
cluster::> nfs server modify -vserver DEMO -v4-grace-seconds 45

To modify the grace period for storage failover operations, run the following command:
cluster::> node run [node names or *] options locking.grace_lease_seconds

Difference between grace seconds and lease seconds

There are two options in an ONTAP NFS server that control the timeout behavior of NFSv4 locks.
Although they are similar, they are not identical. The section “NFSv4.x locking” covers these options as
well.
• v4-lease-seconds – This is how long ONTAP grants a lock/lease to the client.
• v4-grace-seconds – This is how long ONTAP and the client will try to maintain that lock state
during LIF failovers/migrations.
The minimum value set for v4-grace-seconds must be at least 1 second longer than the v4-lease-
seconds value (enforced by ONTAP). This is because if a lease is granted for 45 seconds, you’ll want to
ensure you keep trying for at least that long, plus additional time in case the failover event exceeds the
lease seconds. These are the default values of those options:
cluster::*> nfs server show -vserver DEMO -fields v4-lease-seconds,v4-grace-seconds
vserver v4-lease-seconds v4-grace-seconds
------- ---------------- ----------------
DEMO 30 45

By default, an NFSv4 lease is granted to a client for 30 seconds. If a failure event occurs (such as
network outage or storage failover), the lease will exist for 30 seconds. For an additional 15 seconds,
ONTAP and the client will try to reestablish those locks. If network or storage failures exceed 45 seconds,
those locks are released and the client/application must re-establish the lock on its own.

NFSv4.1 sessions
In ONTAP, NFSv4.1 sessions are supported. With NFSv4.1 sessions, LIF migrations can be disruptive to
NFSv4.1 operations, but they are less disruptive than with NFSv4.0. For more information, see RFC-
5661, section 2.10.13. For ways to get extra performance with sessions for both NFSv3 and NFSv4.x,
see the section called “Nconnect.”

What happens during LIF migrations in NFSv4.x?

When a data LIF hosting NFSv4.x traffic is migrated in ONTAP, existing NFSv4.x traffic must be quiesced
until a safe point in the process to move the LIF. After the NFS server is determined safe to allow the
migration, the LIF is then moved to the new location and lock states are reclaimed by NFS clients. Lock
state reclamation is controlled by the NFS option -v4-grace-seconds (45 seconds by default). With
NFSv4.1 sessions, this grace period is not needed, because the lock states are stored in the NFSv4.1
session. Busier systems cause longer latency in LIF migrations, because the system must wait longer for
the operations to quiesce and the LIF waits longer to migrate. However, disruptions occur only during the
lock reclamation process.

LIF migrations with NFSv3

When a LIF migrates due to storage failover or port failure, ONTAP broadcasts an ARP announcement
over the network for the IP address to inform clients that the MAC address has changed for the data LIF.
As a result, the clients update their ARP tables to reflect that change. If a client cannot update the ARP
entry (such as if a client firewall like AppArmor or SELinux is blocking ARP broadcasts), the NFS access
still attempts to use the old MAC address, which causes access failures/mount hangs until the LIF fails

66 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
back to the original MAC address or the ARP cache is updated. Figure 9 shows the ARP during LIF
migration.

Figure 9) Gratuitous ARP during LIF migration.

You can view the ARP caches on clients and compare the MAC entries with the port information on the
NetApp cluster.
For example, this is what the client sees:
# arp -a x.x.x.a
demo.ntap.local (x.x.x.a) at 90:e2:ba:7f:d4:bc [ether] on eno16780032

This is what ONTAP sees:

cluster::*> net int show -vserver DEMO -address x.x.x.a -fields curr-port,curr-node
vserver lif curr-node curr-port
------- ----- ------------------ ---------
DEMO data2 node2 e2a

cluster::*> net port show -node node2 -port e2a -fields mac
node port mac
------------------ ---- -----------------
Node2 e2a 90:e2:ba:7f:d4:bc

When the LIF is migrated, the client’s ARP cache gets updated with the new port’s MAC address.
cluster::*> net int migrate -lif data2 -destination-node node1 -destination-port e2a

cluster::*> net port show -node node1 -port e2a -fields mac
node port mac
------------------ ---- -----------------
node1 e2a 90:e2:ba:7f:da:bc

# arp -a x.x.x.a
demo.ntap.local (x.x.x.a) at 90:e2:ba:7f:da:bc [ether] on eno16780032

Safely decommissioning data LIFs in use with NFS

In some cases, you might want to decommission an IP address in a data SVM. However, if those IP
addresses are actively being used by NFS mounts/SMB shares, then you face the potential of creating an
unintentional outage in your environment. This becomes potentially more problematic if those IP
addresses are a part of a DNS load balancing zone. Clients might still try to make active connections to
IP addresses that have been removed, and clients that were previously already connected to those IP
addresses will still try sending operations to that IP address, even if it has been removed from the SVM. A
TCP connection does not automatically update the IP address until a remount is performed.

67 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
If you plan on decommissioning, removing, or even modifying the admin status of a data LIF to down, use
the following gudielines:
• If the data LIFs are participating in a DNS load balance zone or round robin, remove those LIFs from
the zone some time prior to the maintenance window. For ONTAP on-box DNS, use net int
modify -dns-zone none. For off-box DNS, delete any A/AAAA records for those IP addresses.
The goal is to ensure no new clients mount to the IP addresses.
• Before modifying the interfaces to -status-admin down, check for existing network connections:
− In ONTAP 9.6 and earlier, use network connections active show.
− For SMB/CIFS clients, use cifs session show.
− For NFS clients in ONTAP 9.6 and later, use nfs connected-clients show.
• Keep in mind that there may be some inactive clients out there that have mounts connected; these
lists only show recently accessed connections (~24 hours or so). However, those clients are likely not
an issue when decommissioning interfaces, because they don’t use the mounts. To be thorough,
check the connections for a few days until the number reaches zero or you have notified those clients
still connected about the maintenance window.
• After you have confidence that no mission-critical clients are accessing the IP addresses being
decommissioned, you can remove the interfaces. If you are removing multiple interfaces, don’t
remove all of them at once in case you missed a stray client or two. This helps minimize disruption in
case there’s a mistake.
• For examples of network connections active show commands, see the section “Viewing active NFS
connections in the cluster.”
• For examples of NFS connected-clients show, see the section “NFS connected-clients sample
output.”

pNFS and LIF outages

pNFS provides a way for NFSv4.1 clients to redirect traffic to nodes that own the volumes containing the
data being read or written, which offers performance benefits by way of data locality. Doing this requires a
data LIF in the SVM on each node of the cluster that participates in data access so that there is always a
possible local path. If nonroutable LIFs exist in the SVM, then pNFS might still select those data LIFs and
an outage can occur. If using pNFS, avoid adding data LIFs to the SVM that cannot communicate with the
NFSv4.1 clients.
In the event a data LIF goes offline, then data I/O falls back to the MDS, which is the IP address the
mount is attached to. If the data LIF goes down during data I/O, then there is an up to 60 second delay
until the client falls back to the MDS connection to resume data I/O.

Wdelay/No_wdelay
Some applications (such as RedHat OpenShift) make a specific requirement for the NFS server export
option no_wdelay. This is to help protect against cache incoherency, performance, and other issues that
some NFS servers that do not guarantee writes might have with application interoperability. ONTAP does
not make use of this export option, because all writes in ONTAP are immediately available after the write
has been acknowledged by the NFS client.

Direct connect NFS

Direct connect NFS refers to using a direct connection from an NFS client to the storage system. Because
NFS is an Ethernet-based protocol, there is no technical reason this won’t work. However, in a NetApp
cluster, there are multiple nodes used for NFS connectivity. In the event of a storage failover, cable
failure, port failure, and so on, the directly connected client will have no way to communicate with the NFS
export.

68 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
It is highly recommended to use NFS over a full-fledged network for the best reliability and performance.

Choosing volume styles: FlexGroup or FlexVol?

When deploying volumes to use with NFS workloads, you have two choices of volume styles available:
• FlexVol volumes are the standard volume type available in ONTAP and span a single node’s
hardware.
• FlexGroups are volumes that are made of up multiple FlexVol member volumes spanning multiple
hardware domains in a cluster that provide a number of advantages over FlexVol volumes including:
− Volume sizes greater than 100TB (20PB tested).
− File counts greater than 2 billion (400 billion tested).
− Multi-threaded metadata operations that provide 2-6x performance for high-ingest workloads.
− Ability to use multiple nodes in a cluster to automatically balance workloads.
− FlexVol-like management for ease of use.
− Nondisruptive expansion when a volume reaches capacity.
In most NFS workloads, a FlexGroup volume provides more benefits over FlexVol volumes. The main
caveat when deciding is to check feature parity between the volume styles to see if necessary features in
your environment are supported or not. For more information regarding FlexGroup volumes, including a
deeper look at deployment and decision points, see TR-4571: NetApp FlexGroup Volumes Best Practices
and Implementation.

NFS auditing
The following section covers the setup and use of NFS auditing, which can use either NFSv4.x audit
ACEs (UNIX security styles) or Windows audit ACEs (NTFS security styles).

NFS audit setup

The main requirement for setting up NFS auditing is to have an audit ACE on the volume that requires
auditing. The audit ACE can be Windows or NFSv4.x, but in NFS-only environments, the ACE must be
NFSv4.x. As a result, NFSv4.x must be enabled in the NFS server, and an NFSv4.x admin client needs to
be used to set up the auditing.

Enabling auditing on Data ONTAP system

For more information about NFSv4.x ACLs, see the “NFSv4.x ACLs.”
After NFSv4.x and NFSv4.x ACLs are enabled, enable NFS auditing with the following command:
cluster::> vserver audit create -vserver nfs -destination /unix -rotate-size 100MB

This command allows auditing for NFS and CIFS access on the junction path /unix for the SVM named
nfs. After auditing is enabled on the Data ONTAP system, the AUDIT ACEs should be created.
Note: If using inheritable audit ACEs, be sure to create at least one inheritable allow or deny ACE on
the parent directory to avoid access issues. For more information, see bug 959337.

Creating NFSv4 AUDIT ACEs

To create an NFSv4 AUDIT ACE, mount the volume on which auditing was enabled using NFSv4.x. After
the volume is mounted, create an AUDIT ACE on the volume, files, and/or directories where auditing is
required.

69 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
An AUDIT ACE can be used to track ALLOW or DENY for a variety of operations, including:
• Read
• Write
• Execute
• Append
• Delete
For information about all of the ACE permissions in NFSv4, see http://linux.die.net/man/5/nfs4_acl.
Each Linux client uses a different method of assigning NFSv4.x ACEs. In RHEL/CentOS/Fedora, the
commands nfs4_setacl and nfs4_getacl are used.
An AUDIT ACE leverages flags to specify if auditing should be for successes, failures, or both. AUDIT
ACEs use the ACE type of U.
Figure 10 shows an example of setting NFSv4 audit ACE.

Figure 10) Example of setting NFSv4 audit ACE.

After the AUDIT ACE is applied and the user that is being audited attempts access, and the events get
logged to an XML file on the volume.
For an example of a logged NFS audit event, see “NFS audit event example.”

NFS best practices

The following section covers best practices with NFS environments. Best practices are simply
recommendations that should be considered when using and deploying NFS. Best practices are not hard
requirements, and in many cases are dependent on a variety of factors in the environment.

General ONTAP best practices

The following list provides general ONTAP best practices:
• Upgrade to the latest ONTAP version for bug fixes and newest NFS features.
• Use Active IQ for upgrade recommendations and proactive remediation.
• Enable Autosupport to allow for a seamless and efficient support experience.
• Configure load-sharing mirrors for the vsroot volume in NFSv3 environments.
• For the best performance, use NetApp All-Flash FAS systems.
• Enable all storage efficiencies for maximum storage utilization.
• Follow best practices for aggregate and storage configurations as per the product documentation.
• In most cases, leave the defaults unchanged unless there is a specific reason to change the settings.
• Install Active IQ Unified Manager and configure to monitor your ONTAP cluster.
• Set up proactive alerts for events such as storage failovers, volume capacity alerts, and so on.
• Consider deploying FlexGroup volume for your NFS workloads, particularly in high file count
environments.

70 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
ONTAP data LIF best practices with NFS environments
ONTAP allows storage administrators to provide the following benefits:
• Seamless scale-out storage
• Multiprotocol unified access (NFS, CIFS, and SAN)
• Nondisruptive operations
This is done by way of a secure multitenant architecture with SVMs.

What are SVMs?

SVMs are logical storage containers that own storage resources such as flexible volumes, logical
interfaces (LIFs), exports, CIFS shares, and so on. Think of them as a storage blade center in your
cluster. These SVMs share physical hardware resources in the cluster with one another, such as network
ports/VLANs, aggregates with physical disk, CPU, RAM, switches, and so on. Data access can occur on
any data network interface owned by SVMs, regardless of the location in the cluster. As a result, load for
SVMs can be balanced across a cluster for maximum performance and efficiency or to leverage SaaS
functionality, among other benefits. Alternately, a single SVM can be used to present a monolithic storage
device to an environment.

Data LIF considerations

Data LIFs can live on any physical port in a cluster that is added to a valid broadcast domain. These data
LIFs are configured with SVM-aware routing mechanisms that allow the correct pathing of Ethernet traffic
in an SVM, regardless of where a valid data LIF lives in the cluster. When designing a network for NAS
interaction, one of two approaches can be taken.

Option #1: Simplicity approach - single LIF per SVM

Essentially, all it takes to access NAS data in ONTAP is a single network IP address that is routable to
network clients. In many environments, a single network interface will suffice for NAS workloads. If the
underlying physical network port fails, or if a storage node is taken over by its HA partner, then the
network IP address migrates to another working port in the cluster. Using a single network interface
reduces the number of IP addresses needed, but it also limits the amount of potential network bandwidth
that would be available to a workload. Sending all NAS traffic to a single node in the cluster also limits the
number of resources (such as CPU and RAM) available, so if a workload is expected to require high
throughput or will connect hundreds to thousands of clients, then option #2 might be a better choice.
Figure 11 shows a single LIF NAS interaction.

Figure 11) Single LIF NAS interaction.

71 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Option #2: Performance approach - multiple data LIFs per SVM
In an ONTAP cluster, multiple nodes can be made available for NAS connectivity and storage.
Remember, ONTAP clusters using NAS can only scale up to 24 nodes. Multiple nodes mean multiple
physical resources, such as CPU/RAM/network interfaces. As a result, having more than one data LIF in
an SVM can add considerable performance to your NAS workloads. Spreading network connections
across nodes alleviates CPU and network port contention, as well as avoiding scenarios where a node
might have too many TCP connections. For network load balancing of NAS connections, round robin
DNS, on-box DNS, or standard load balancing hardware can be leveraged. For more information
regarding on-box DNS (and how to configure it), see TR-4523: DNS Load Balancing in ONTAP.
In situations where the best possible performance is required, or where many clients will be accessing a
NAS device at the same time, creating multiple data LIFs per SVM is a sound approach. Additionally, use
of load balancing NAS features such as NFS referrals, CIFS autolocation and pNFS will require a data
LIF on each node where data resides.
Figure 12 shows multiple LIFs NAS interaction.

Figure 12) Multiple LIFs NAS interaction.

Data LIF locality recommendations

In ONTAP, you have the ability to leverage data locality features such as NFS referrals, CIFS
autolocation, and pNFS for NAS traffic regardless of where the volumes live in a cluster. For NFS
referrals and CIFS autolocation, the initial TCP connection is automatically redirected to a network
interface that is local to the requested volume. If the volume being used is a FlexGroup volume, then NFS
referrals and CIFS autolocation should not be used.
pNFS provides a metadata path on the initial mount request, but all reads and writes are automatically
redirected to local volumes through pNFS layout calls. pNFS is only available for the NFSv4.1 protocol
and only with NFS clients that support it. FlexGroup volumes can only use pNFS in ONTAP 9.7 and later.
For more information about pNFS, see “Parallel network file system.”
Without autolocation features, managing data LIF locality to avoid the cluster network adds management
complexity that might not be worth the effort, as the performance impact for most NFS workloads is
negligible. Ideally, NAS connections connect to data LIFs that are local to the volumes, but with
FlexGroup volumes/scale-out NAS and larger cluster backend networks, this becomes less important.

72 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Data locality benefits and considerations
The following section describes the benefits and considerations of data locality in ONTAP and how to
approach these concepts with simplicity in mind.
Ability to spread the load across nodes and leverage all the available hardware in a cluster
When creating volumes and network interfaces, consider deploying workloads across multiple nodes in
the cluster to maximize the performance headroom. Why pay for hardware you do not use?
Simplicity approach: ONTAP provides automated provisioning of storage when using ONTAP System
Manager. This takes into account available performance headroom and attempts to place new volumes
on nodes that are less utilized. Additionally. FlexGroup volumes provision across multiple nodes in a
cluster and automatically balance workloads to a single namespace.
Ability to balance network connections across multiple cluster nodes
Clusters are single entities, as are SVMs. But they do have underlying hardware that has its own
maximums, such as number of connections and so on.
Simplicity approach: Create multiple data LIFs per SVM and mask those interfaces behind a DNS round
robin name or DNS forwarding zone leveraging the ONTAP on-box DNS feature. In addition, leverage
FlexGroup volumes to spread workloads across multiple nodes.
Ability to enable data locality in the event of a volume move
If you move a volume to another node, you can be certain you still have a local path to the data if every
node has a data LIF for the SVM. When moving volumes in ONTAP to new nodes, existing TCP
connections remain in place for NAS clients. As a result, these NAS operations traverse the cluster
network.
Simplicity approach: Do nothing. In most cases, NAS clients notices no difference in performance to
these NAS shares. If using NFSv4.1, consider using pNFS.

Network port exhaustion with a large number of NFS clients

In environments with a large number of clients connecting through NFS, it is important to keep in mind
that, by default, the number of mount and NFS ports are limited to 1,024.
This number is controlled with the options:
mount-rootonly
nfs-rootonly

By default, mount-rootonly is set to Enabled and nfs-rootonly is set to Disabled.

In some circumstances, the number of ports used to mount or for NFS operations might be exhausted,
which then causes subsequent mount and NFS operations to hang until a port is made available.
If an environment has thousands of clients that are mounted through NFS and generating I/O, it is
possible to exhaust all ports on an NFS server. For example, there is one scenario with ESX using NFS
datastores, because some legacy best practices would call for a data LIF/IP address per datastore. In
environments with many volumes/datastores, this scenario created a situation where NFS ports were
overrun. The remediation for this situation is to disable the mount-rootonly and/or the nfs-rootonly
options on the NFS server. This solution removes the 1 to 1,024 port range limit and allows up to 65,534
ports to be used in a NFS server. For more information on these options, see “The rootonly options –
nfsrootonly and mountrootonly.”
Note: For ESX/NFS best practices in ONTAP, see TR-4597: VMware vSphere with ONTAP.
This situation affects the source port (client-side) only. The server-side mountd, portmapper, NFS, and
nlm ports are designated by ONTAP.

73 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
NFS behind network address translation
NFS maintains a reply cache to keep track of certain operations to make sure that they have been
completed. This cache is based on the source port and source IP address. When network address
translation (NAT) is used in NFS operations, the source IP or port might change in flight, which could lead
to data resiliency issues. If NAT is used, static entries for the NFS server IP and port should be added to
make sure that data remains consistent.
In addition, NAT could also lead to issues with NFS mounts hanging due to how NAT handles idle
sessions. If using NAT, the configuration should take idle sessions into account and leave them open
indefinitely to prevent issues. NAT can also create issues with NLM lock reclamation.
Ultimately, the best practice for NAT with NFS would be to avoid using it if possible and instead create a
data LIF on the SVM. If NAT is necessary, work with the NAT vendor to configure it properly for NFS
operations.

LIF service policies

ONTAP 9.6 and later introduces LIF service policies, which replace the concept of roles on network data
interfaces in ONTAP. LIF policies can be applied or removed to a network interface to allow/disallow
traffic without needing to recreate the network interface.
You can see which service policy your interfaces have by running the following command:
cluster::*> net int show -vserver DEMO -lif data -fields service-policy
(network interface show)
vserver lif service-policy
------- ---- ------------------
DEMO data default-data-files

LIF service policies create several default policies, but you can add custom policies if you choose. These
are the following default policies, which allow SAN, NAS, or management traffic. Only one policy can be
assigned to a data LIF at a time.
cluster::*> network interface service-policy show -vserver DEMO
Vserver Policy Service: Allowed Addresses
--------- -------------------------- ----------------------------------------
DEMO
default-data-blocks data-core: 0.0.0.0/0, ::/0
data-iscsi: 0.0.0.0/0, ::/0
data-fpolicy-client: 0.0.0.0/0, ::/0

default-data-files data-core: 0.0.0.0/0, ::/0

data-nfs: 0.0.0.0/0, ::/0
data-cifs: 0.0.0.0/0, ::/0
data-flexcache: 0.0.0.0/0, ::/0
data-fpolicy-client: 0.0.0.0/0, ::/0

default-management data-core: 0.0.0.0/0, ::/0

management-ssh: 0.0.0.0/0, ::/0
management-https: 0.0.0.0/0, ::/0
data-fpolicy-client: 0.0.0.0/0, ::/0

To create policies that allow only NFS or only CIFS/SMB, you can use network interface
service-policy create, or you can add or remove services with network interface service-
policy add-service or network interface service-policy remove-service. This can all
be done without taking an outage.
For more information, see LIFs and service policies in ONTAP 9.6 and later.

74 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
NFS security best practices
While NFS stands for Network File System, it has playfully been referred to as Not For Security. NFSv3
and earlier were limited in security scope, because client IP addresses, numeric user, and group IDs and
other identifying information would be passed over networks in clear text.
Because the default security mechanisms for NFSv3 security are export rules and basic user mode-bit
permissions, spoofing IP addresses and user identities for access is fairly simple and straightforward. As
a result, use the following suggestions to better secure your NFS environments.

Choosing your NFS version

When deploying an NFS environment, the NFS version being used is one of the many things to consider.
NFSv3 is by far the most popular NFS version, but NFSv4.x is increasing in popularity as more and more
businesses are requiring more stringent security requirements:
• If security is the most important factor in your environment, you should at the very least test NFSv4.x,
as it is designed for security.
• If raw performance is the priority, then NFSv3 would be the prudent choice, as its statelessness
provides distinct performance advantages over NFSv4.x.
• If locking is important, then NFSv4.x offers the most robust and resilient options.
• If a blend of functionality is required, then it is best to test which NFS version makes the most sense
for your workloads.
The section called “NFS version considerations” breaks down the details of all NFS versions, advantages,
features and migration considerations.

Securing NFSv3
While NFSv4.x is superior to NFSv3 for security, there are still some steps you can take to better secure
the protocol.

Export policy rule considerations

Export policies and rules are the first gateway for securing an NFS export. These rules allow you to
specify one or more clients and define the level of access they’ll receive when they mount an export.
These rules override file-level permissions. For example, if you set “read/write” (rwrule) to Never, then
even if the UNIX permissions are 777, that client won’t be able to write to the export. For more information
about NFS export policies and rules, see “Export concepts.”
The way in which you set up your export policies and rules affects whether a client is allowed to mount
the export at all. When securing NFSv3 exports, consider the following information:
• If an export policy has no rules and is applied to a volume or qtree, then no one will be allowed
access to mount.
• If an export policy rule doesn’t include a specific client (either through IP, host, name, netgroup/, or
ubnet), that client will be unable to mount.
• If the export policy rule on the vsroot volume does not allow read access to a specific client, then that
client will be unable to mount the export. Read access is required on an export policy rule to allow
clients to traverse the paths to the volume. Vsroot is “/” in the export path.
− Vsroot uses the default export policy when it’s created. By default, the “default policy” has no
export rules.
• When setting the clientmatch for the vsroot’s export policy rule to allow path traversal, consider
setting it by netgroup, subnet, or a list of clients. Avoid setting the entry to 0.0.0.0/0 or 0/0; this allows
all clients to traverse/read the export. For more information, see “Access control to vsroot.”

75 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
• To allow (or prevent) root access for a client, use the Superuser export policy rule option. For more
information, see “Mapping all UIDs to a single UID (squash_all).”
• In multiprotocol NAS environments (CIFS/SMB and NFS access), the way ONTAP responds to
permission or owner changes on NFS mounts of volumes with NTFS security depends on the setting
of the export policy. The options are Fail (send an error) or Ignore (fail silently with no error).
• Setting -rw-rule, -ro-rule or -superuser to None will squash a client’s access to the user set
with -anon. In most cases, -anon should be set to 65534. Exceptions would include setting -anon
to 0 to allow root access to an admin host or setting it to an explicit user to control file ownership for a
specific client/set of clients.
• Rather than setting host names and IP addresses in the export clientmatch, consider using netgroups
to mask host/client lists in the -clientmatch field. Netgroups can live in local files on an SVM, in
LDAP, or NIS.
• For clients that are doing read/write access, set -superuser to None and -anon to 65534 to
prevent root access.
• Consider setting up a group of clients that are designated for administrative/root-level tasks and set
the export policy to allow root access. See “Examples of controlling the root user” for details on how
to allow root access.
• If you’re using Kerberos for NFSv3 mounts, ensure you’ve included both sys and krb5* in your
rules. NFSv3 uses ancillary protocols and only uses Kerberos for the NFS portion. Limiting access to
export policy rules in NFSv3 to only krb5* will result in failed mounts, because sys access is
needed for portmapper, mount, and so on.
• Avoid using any for -rw-rule, -ro-rule, -superuser; allowing any reduces the security
effectiveness of the policy rule. Instead, specify the authentication method you require in those
options.
• Avoid using any for -protocol, because this allows access to protocols you might not want to use.
If you require both NFSv3 an NFSv4.x access to mounts, set the protocol to nfs. If you only want
NFSv3 or only NFSv4.x to access a mount, specify either nfs3 or nfs4.

Client firewalls
By default, NFS clients enable firewalls (such as SELinux in RHEL or AppArmor in Ubuntu). In some
cases, those firewalls can impact NFS operations. Always check the client firewall rules if NFS access
issues occur, and, if necessary during troubleshooting, stop the firewall service.

Firewall port rules

For NFSv3, there are a number of ports that need to be allowed by firewalls to provide full access to all
NFSv3 operations. In general, firewalls have built-in rules, such as NFS that keeps a list of well-known
NFS ports. However, many security environments recommend changing well-known ports for better
security. The ports listed in “Default NFS ports in ONTAP” show which ports ONTAP uses by default for
NFSv3, which ports can be modified and which NFS version they apply to.
The following list provides a set of general recommendations and guidance for firewall rules. These are
not NetApp requirements; they are simply ideas to help secure NFS environments.
• Consider changing the default port numbers for NFS ancillary protocols to ports that are not well-
known and adjusting firewall ports as needed.
• Consider allowing only the NFSv3 ports that are needed by your environment. For example, if rquota
is not being used, don’t allow it though a firewall. There are several ports that are required for NFS
mounts, however, so you should always allow those port numbers.
− Portmapper (111), mountd (635) and NFS (2049) are required to allow NFS access. Other
ancillary ports (NLM, NSM, rquota) are only needed if an application or client needs them. Test in
your environment accordingly.

76 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
• NFS mounts generate a source port on the client. By default, ONTAP sets the range of allowed
source ports between 1–1024 (-mount-rootonly). In some cases, this range of port numbers
might not be large enough to accommodate the number of clients that are mounting. If more source
port numbers are needed, set -mount-rootonly to Disabled and modify the firewall rules to
accommodate that change. For more information, see “The rootonly options – nfsrootonly and
mountrootonly.”
• NFS operations also use a range of source ports that can be controlled through -nfs-rootonly. By
default, this value is set to Disabled, which means the port range is 1–65536. If a low number of NFS
clients is used (100 or less), consider setting this option to Enabled to reduce the port range to 1–
1024 for better security.
• Avoid opening up NFS ports outside of your local network. If NFS over a WAN is required, strongly
consider using NFS Kerberos with krb5p for end-to-end encryption. Alternately, consider using
NetApp FlexCache volumes to localize NFS traffic to a remote site. NetApp FlexCache volumes use
TLS 1.2 to encrypt communications. For more information about FlexCache volumes, see TR-4743:
FlexCache in ONTAP.
• Export policy rules and name services for UNIX identity management might be dependent on external
name servers (such as DNS, LDAP, NIS, Active Directory, and so on). Make sure the firewall rules
allow traffic for those name servers.
• Some firewalls might drop idle TCP connections after a set amount of time. For example, if a client
has an NFS mount connected, but doesn’t use it for a while, it’s considered Idle. When this occurs,
client access to mounts can hang, because the network connection has been severed by the firewall.
Keepalives can help prevent this, but it is better to address this either by configuring firewalls to
actively reject packets from stale sessions or configuring the ONTAP NFS server options -idle-
connection-timeout and -allow-idle-connection. These options were introduced in
ONTAP 9.5. For more information, see Bug 1072144.

Permissions
While it’s possible to set read and write permissions for clients in export policies, you cannot set
permissions for specific users and groups with just export rules. In addition, you can’t get more granular
than read or write with export policies. As a result, file and folder permissions would be needed. NFSv3,
by default, uses a fairly basic permission model for files and folders via mode-bits, which means that
permissions can only be explicitly controlled for the file/folder owner and everyone else. Additionally, the
level of permissions is limited to what is defined in RFC-1813.
Figure 14 shows what each permission mode bit does from 0–7.

Table 14) UNIX Mode-bit levels.

Symbolic notation Mode bit value Access level
- 0 No access
rwx 7 All access
rw- 6 Read & write
r-x 5 Read and execute
r-- 4 Read
-wx 3 Write and execute
-w- 2 Write
---x 1 Execute

It is also possible to leverage an NFSv4.x admin client to mount a file system and add NFSv4.x ACLs,
which are then honored by NFSv3 clients. This provide more granular permissions for NFSv3
environments.

77 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
The following additional recommendations can help better secure NFSv3. These are general
recommendations and do not apply to all environments, so be sure to test in your environment.
• For the vsroot volume, limit the ower and group to Read and Execute and everyone else to Execute
only privileges (551). Vsroot is generally small, so you want to prevent users from writing to it when
possible. Limiting everyone other than the owner and group to Execute permissions only allows
traversal of the path and does not allow file/directory listings in the vsroot volume.
• Avoid setting permissions to 7 on volumes/qtrees, unless you want to allow root access to the volume
owner or group.
• Follow standard UNIX permission best practices when managing access to NFS file systems.
• Consider using NFSv4.x ACLs or NTFS security style volume permissions (if multiprotocol NAS is in
use) for more robust permission management.
• If using LDAP or NIS for UNIX identities, ensure the user and group lookups are returning the proper
users and group memberships from the NFS client and server.

User authentication
When an NFS mount is accessed, the authentication method is negotiated between the client and server.
For standard AUTH_SYS access, the user credentials are passed over the wire in plain text, which
means anyone spying on the network can see those credentials and use them to gain access to the file
system. With standard AUTH_SYS, there is no user name/password gateway to safeguard against
unintended access.
For the best security result with authentication in NFSv3, consider enabling NFS Kerberos for your NFS
mounts. AUTH_GSS (or Kerberos) configuration provides a few levels of protection for access, including:
• User name/password interaction with a Kerberos Key Distribution Center server (such as Windows
Active Directory, and FreeIPA)
• Security settings protecting against changing the time on a client to reuse an expired Kerberos
credential.
• Encryption of the NFS operations, ranging from logins (krb5), data integrity checks (krb5i) and end-to-
end NFS encryption (krb5p).
• An increase of the maximum number of user group membership from 16 in AUTH_SYS to 32 in
AUTH_GSS. (ONTAP provides a way to increase this number to 1,024 in the “Auxiliary GIDs –
addressing the 16 GID limitation for NFS” section)
For more information, see TR-4616: NFS Kerberos in ONTAP.

Encryption
ONTAP provides in-flight encryption for NFS through krb5p, but also offers a few options for encrypting
data at-rest. These options include:
• SED and NSE drives
• NVE
• NAE
For more information about encryption and security hardening, see TR-4569: Security Hardening Guide
for ONTAP.

Showmount
Historically, showmount on NFS clients has been how users can see exported file systems on an NFS
server. By default, NFS servers in ONTAP enable the showmount functionality to show exported paths,
but do not list the allowed client access. Instead, showmount displays that (everyone) has access.

78 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
The “/” root path is not displayed in the showmount commands by default. To control the behavior of
showmount and show the root path, use the following NFS server options:
-showmount
-showmount-rootonly

This functionality might cause security scanners to flag the NFS server that has a vulnerability, because
these scanners often use showmount to see what is being returned. In those scenarios, you might want
to disable showmount on the NFS server.
However, some applications make use of showmount for functionality, such as Oracle OVM. In those
scenarios, inform the security team of the application requirements.

Securing NFSv4.x
NFSv4.x offers more robust security than NFSv3 and should be used in any NFS environment that will
prioritize security over all else.
NFSv4.x security features include:
• Single port for all NFS operations
• ID domain string matching
• NFSv4.x ACLs
• Integrated Kerberos support for user name/password authentication and end-to-end encryption
• Client ID checks to help prevent client spoofing

Export policy rule considerations

The export policy rule considerations for NFSv4.x generally mirror those covered in “Securing NFSv3.”
Review those considerations for guidance.

Client firewalls
NFS clients, by default, enable firewalls (such as SELinux in RHEL or AppArmor in Ubuntu). In some
cases, those firewalls might impact NFS operations. Always check the client firewall rules if NFS access
issues occur, and, if necessary during troubleshooting, stop the firewall service.

Firewall port rules

Unlike NFSv3, NFSv4.x combines all NFS operations into compound calls that all leverage the same NFS
port – 2049. This port is not modifiable in ONTAP, so if you plan on using NFSv4.x, firewall port rules
should be modified to allow port 2049.

Permissions
NFSv4.x provides permissions through mode-bits, as well as NFSv4.x ACLs. The advantages of ACLs
are covered in “Benefits of Enabling NFSv4 ACLs,” but for the most robust and granular security with
NFSv4.x, use ACLs.

User authentication
For user authentication in NFSv4.x, the same guidance discussed in “Securing NFSv3” should be
followed – use Kerberos whenever the highest level of security is required.

Encryption
For encryption in-flight and at-rest in NFSv4.x, the same guidance discussed in “Securing NFSv3” should
be followed.

79 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Name services best practices
ONTAP provides support for external name service servers for DNS, LDAP/NIS, Kerberos and Active
Directory. In NAS environments, name services can provide a wide array of benefits for performance,
resiliency, and manageability. Detailed name service best practices can be found in TR-4668: Name
Service Best Practices, but here are a few general name service best practices to follow:
• Centralize name services whenever possible. In environments with hundreds or thousands of
users, groups, host names, and so on, trying to keep local copies of files in sync across the
organization can result in inconsistencies, duplicate host names or user credentials, and general
confusion across platforms. Pointing your clients and ONTAP cluster to the same set of name
services vastly reduces the management overhead in these environments and simplifies access
permissions and troubleshooting.
• Always configure DNS. In the same vein as centralization of name services, having a centralized
service to keep track of host names, IP addresses, DNS zones, and domains and service records
rather than trying to maintain these manually is essential. DNS in particular is critical to the
functionality of many NAS services – particularly Windows Active Directory, Kerberos KDCs, LDAP
(for service record lookups and load balancing) and NFSv4.x.
• In NFSv4.x environments, use LDAP for UNIX identity management. Because NFSv4.x leverages
name strings for user authentication, and because user name matching across server and clients
controls how NFSv4.x functions, having a centralized name service for UNIX identities for NFSv4.x
clients and ONTAP to point to makes using NFSv4.x that much simpler.
• When using name service servers, have more than one. Name service servers might receive
thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of requests every day. Those requests have a
performance cost – both on the network and on the name service servers. ONTAP does a good job of
caching requests, but name service servers can still get overwhelmed unless you’ve set up multiple
servers and added them to the client and ONTAP configuration. Even better, load balancing several
servers behind the same DNS name allows for easier configuration, reduces the need to re-configure
clients and servers if name service addresses change, and masks the number of servers that are
being used to load balance requests.

NFS client best practices

NFS client best practices are generally dependent on the applications being used. When determining how
to configure NFS clients, always involve the application vendor in those discussions. The following best-
practice recommendations are not set in stone and can be overridden by application recommendations or
by workload testing.

Client and NFS utility versions

For NFS client versions, the best practice is usually to run the latest OS patch version available, as well
as updating the NFS utilities to their latest releases to get the newest bug fixes and feature functionality.
In environments where OS and NFS utility versions are qualified and standardized, this might not be an
option.
As a general rule, ONTAP NFS supports and any all NFS clients that comply with RFC standards. This
does not include NFS clients that have custom kernel compilations.

RPC Slot tables

RPC slot table refers to the maximum allowed threads on a single TCP connection that is allowed by the
NFS client and server. These values are controlled through sunrpc configuration on NFS clients. The
latest NFS client versions default to a dynamic slot table value of 65536, which means that the client
attempts to use as many slot tables as it can in a single TCP connection. ONTAP, however, supports only
128 slot tables per TCP connection. If a client exceeds that value, ONTAP enacts NAS flow control and
pause the client operations until resources are freed up.

80 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
As a best practice, set the slot table values on NFS clients to a static value no higher than 128. In
environments with many clients, this value might need to be set as low as 16. For more information,
including details on the performance impact, see “Network connection concurrency and TCP slots:
NFSv3.”

Mount options
NFS mount option recommendations depend solely on the workload and application being used. There is
general advice for specific mount options, but the decision on which NFS options to use is dependent on
the client OS administrators and application vendor recommendations. There is no single correct
recommendation for mount options. The following sections cover only a subset of NFS mount options. For
a complete list of supported NFS mount options, use man nfs on your NFS client.

Default mount options

Linux clients set the default mount options out of the box. These default options depend on the client OS
version and NFS configuration files found on the clients. The default mount options are set during a
mount operation where no options are specified with the -o flag.
In some cases, mount options are negotiated with the NFS server. Specifically, in newer Linux kernels,
the rsize/wsize values and the NFS versions are based on what the NFS server is set to.
For example, if NFSv4.1 is enabled and no NFS version is specified in configuration files or with the
mount command, then the client uses NFSv4.1 because it is the highest supported NFS version enabled.
The following example shows output from a mount command that issued no specific options. The ONTAP
NFS server was set to 1MB TCP max transfer size (-tcp-max-xfer-size) and has NFSv4.1 enabled.
# mount DEMO:/flexgroup_16 /flexgroup
# mount | grep flexgroup
DEMO:/flexgroup_16 on /flexgroup type nfs4
(rw,relatime,vers=4.1,rsize=1048576,wsize=1048576,namlen=255,hard,proto=tcp,port=0,timeo=600,retr
ans=2,sec=sys,clientaddr=10.x.x.x,local_lock=none,addr=10.x.x.y)

Wsize/rsize
The mount options wsize and rsize determine how much data is sent between the NFS client and server
for each packet sent. This might help optimize performance for specific applications, but should be set as
per application vendor best practices, as what is best for one application may not be best for other
applications.
Newer NFS clients autonegotiate the wsize and rsize values to what the -tcp-max-xfer-size value is
set to on the ONTAP NFS server if the mount command does not explicitly set the values. ONTAP
defaults -tcp-max-xfer-size to 64K and can be set to a maximum of 1MB.
Note: The general recommendation for -tcp-max-xfer-size is to increase that value in ONTAP to
262144 (256K) and then specify explicit mount options as the applications require it.
For examples of some performance testing with different workload types and different wsize/rsize values,
see “Performance examples for different TCP maximum transfer Window sizes.”
For examples of wsize/rsize recommendations for specific applications, see:
• TR-3633: Oracle on NetApp ONTAP
• TR-4435: SAP HANA on NetApp AFF Systems using NFS

NFS Readahead
Readahead in NFS is a way for NFS clients to predictively request blocks of a file to improve performance
and throughput for sequential I/O workloads. Until recently, the readahead value for NFS mounts was set

81 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
to 15 times the rsize value of the mount. For example, if you set rsize to 64KiB, then readahead size
would be 960KiB.
In modern NFS clients (such as RHEL 8.3 and later or Ubuntu 18.04 and later), the readahead value is no
longer determined by the mount rsize, but is globally defaulted to 128KiB. This can cause severe negative
performance consequences on reads. In newer Linux client versions that use the default 128KiB
readahead value, it is recommended to set the value to a higher limit. Testing read performance with
different values is the preferred method, but internal NetApp testing has found that the value can be
safely set to as high as 15360KiB for sequential read workloads.
For more information about setting and viewing readahead values, consult with your client OS vendor.
For example, this SUSE KB describes readahead for those OS client flavors: Tuning NFS client read
ahead on SLE 10 and 11.
For a CentOS/RedHat client, the process is similar.
# cat /etc/redhat-release
CentOS Linux release 7.8.2003 (Core)

Find the BDEV information for the mount with this command (BDEV format is N:NN):
# cat /proc/self/mountinfo | grep /mnt/client1
125 39 0:46 / /mnt/client1 rw,relatime shared:107 - nfs DEMO:/files
rw,vers=3,rsize=1048576,wsize=1048576,namlen=255,hard,proto=tcp,timeo=600,retrans=2,sec=sys,mount
addr=10.193.67.219,mountvers=3,mountport=635,mountproto=udp,local_lock=none,addr=10.193.67.219

Use the BDEV information to find the readahead value (BDEV for that mount point is 0:46):
# cat /sys/class/bdi/0:46/read_ahead_kb
15360

In the above example, readahead is set to 15360KiB (15x the rsize) for the /mnt/client1 mount and
rsize is set to 1MB on my CentOS 7.8 client.
On CentOS 8.3, this is the value my mount is set to by default:
# cat /sys/class/bdi/0:50/read_ahead_kb
128

Actimeo and Nocto

NFSv3 manages shared file system consistency and application performance by using cached
file/directory data and cached file/directory attributes. It is a loose consistency, because the application
doesn’t have to go to shared storage and retrieve data every time to use it. That can have tremendous
impact to application performance. The cached information has timers that set the period to trust the
cache data and at timeout, a light weight, fast getattr/access call to revalidate the data till the next time
out.
There are two mechanisms that manage this process:
• Cto. Close to open consistency assures getting the latest data for a file, regardless of cache.
• Actimeo. Attribute cache timers (default 3s for file, 30s for directory).
If a client has complete ownership of data, for example, it is not shared, then there is guaranteed
consistency. You can reduce getattr/access operations to storage and speed up the application by turning
off cto consistency (nocto as a mount option) and by turning up the timeouts for the attribute cache
management (actimeo=600 as a mount option changes the timer to 10m versus the defaults previously
mentioned). In some testing, nocto reduces ~65–70% of the getattr/access calls and actimeo reduces
another ~20–25%.

82 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
There are other cases that can benefit from a similar set of mount options, even though there is not
complete ownership by the clients. For applications that use grids of clients such as EDA, web hosting
and movie rendering and have relatively static data sets (such as the tools/libraries in EDA, the web
content for the web hosting, or the textures for rendering), the typical behavior is the data set is largely
cached on the clients (very few reads; no writes). In those instances, there will be many getattr/access
calls coming back to storage. These data sets are typically updated through either another client
mounting the file systems and periodically pushing content updates or in some case SnapMirror
relationships to multiple file systems for update.
In these instances, there is a known lag in picking up new content and the application still works with
potentially out-of-date data. For those scenarios, nocto and actimeo can be used to control the time
period where out-of-data date can be managed. For example, in EDA with tools and libraries and other
static content, actimeo=600 works well because this data is typically updated infrequently. For small web
hosting where clients need to see their data updates timelier as they are editing their sites, actimeo=10
might be acceptable. For large scale web sites where there is content pushed to multiple file systems,
actimeo=60 might be more effective. As always, test with your individual environments.
Using this mount options reduce the workload to storage significantly in these instances (for example, a
recent EDA experience reduced IOPs to the tool volume from >150K to ~6K) and applications can run
significantly faster because they can trust the data in memory, rather than needing to query the NFS
storage. This also helps reduce overall CPU % and load on the ONTAP nodes.

Actimeo
The actimeo mount option controls the attribute cache timeout on NFS clients. The actimeo option covers
the entire range of available attribute caches, including:
acregmin=n
The minimum time (in seconds) that the NFS client caches attributes of a regular file before it
requests fresh attribute information from a server. If this option is not specified, the NFS
client uses a 3-second minimum.

acregmax=n
The maximum time (in seconds) that the NFS client caches attributes of a regular file before it
requests fresh attribute information from a server. If this option is not specified, the NFS
client uses a 60-second maximum.

acdirmin=n
The minimum time (in seconds) that the NFS client caches attributes of a directory before it
requests fresh attribute information from a server. If this option is not specified, the NFS
client uses a 30-second minimum.

acdirmax=n
The maximum time (in seconds) that the NFS client caches attributes of a directory before it
requests fresh attribute information from a server. If this option is not specified, the NFS
client uses a 60-second maximum.

Attribute caching provides some relief on networks by reducing the number of metadata calls. This also
helps reduce latency to some workloads, as these metadata operations can now occur locally on the
client. Attribute caching generally has no effect to the number of overall operations, unless all operations
to the storage were metadata – specifically ACCESS calls.
For example, in our Customer Proof of Concept (CPOC) labs, actimeo was set to 10 minutes (600
seconds) and observed latency cut in half with an EDA workload generated by vdbench (from ~2.08ms to
~1.05ms). Figure 13 shows the actimeo default latency and Figure 14 shows an actimeo 600 latency.

83 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Figure 13) Default actimeo latency - vdbench.

Figure 14) Actimeo=600 latency - vdbench.

The downside of setting the actimeo value too high is that attributes that change might not be reflected
properly until the cache timeout occurs, which could result in unpredictable access issues.
Note: The recommendation for attribute caching is to leave the defaults, unless otherwise directed by
the application vendor or if testing shows a vast improvement in performance.

Nocto
Nocto stands for no close-to-open, which means that a file can close before a write has completed in
order to save time. What this means in NFS environments is that other clients that have a file open for
reading won’t get consistent updates to that file. By default, the nocto option is not set on NFS mounts,
which means that all files will wait to finish writes before allowing a close.
The nocto option is used primarily to increase raw performance. For example, in the same vdbench tests
run in our Customer Proof of Concept Labs, the nocto mount option reduced latency by an additional
.35ms to .7ms, as shown in Figure 15.

84 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Figure 15) Actimeo=600, nocto latency - vdbench.

Note: The recommendation for the nocto option is to use only with read-heavy/read-mostly workloads or
workloads where data is not shared between multiple systems (such as a single-writer workload).

Clientaddr
By default, the clientaddr mount option is set automatically by using the NFS client IP address. However,
in some cases, this option might need to be specified in NFS mounts.
Two scenarios where it might be necessary to specify clientaddr would be:
• Multi-NIC clients might need to specify this option to ensure that NFS uses the desired IP address
for connectivity.
• NFSv4.x clients might need to specify this option if two clients with the same host name (but different
IP addresses) try to access NFS exports in the same SVM. NFSv4.x will send a client ID to the NFS
server based on the host name. ONTAP responds with CLID_IN_USE and prevent the second client
from mounting if it uses the same client ID. Specifying clientaddr option can force the client to
increment the client ID on subsequent mount attempts.
Note: In most instances, the clientaddr option does not need to be specified.

Nconnect
A new NFS mount option called nconnect is in its nascent stages for use with NFS mounts. The nconnect
option is only available on newer Linux clients. Be sure to verify with the OS vendor documentation to
determine whether the option is supported in your kernel.
The purpose of nconnect is to provide multiple transport connections per TCP connection or mount point
on a client. This helps increase parallelism and performance for NFS mounts. Details about nconnect and
how it can increase performance for NFS in Cloud Volumes ONTAP can be found in the blog post The
Real Baseline Performance Story: NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for AWS.
ONTAP 9.8 and later offers official support for the use of nconnect with NFS mounts, provided the NFS
client also supports it. To use nconnect, verify whether your client version provides it and use ONTAP 9.8
or later. ONTAP 9.8 and later supports nconnect by default with no option needed.
Note: Nconnect is not recommended for use with NFSv4.0. NFSv3, NFSv4.1, and NFSv4.2 should work
fine with nconnect.
Table 15 shows results from a single Ubuntu client using different nconnect thread values.

85 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Table 15) Nconnect performance results.
Nconnect value Threads per process Throughput Difference
1 128 1.45GB/s -
2 128 2.4GB/s +66%
4 128 3.9GB/s +169%
8 256 4.07GB/s +181%

Note: The recommendation for using nconnect depends on client OS and application needs. Testing
with this new option is highly recommended before deploying in production.

How can I tell nconnect is working?

Nconnect is designed to allocate more sessions across a single TCP connection. This helps to better
distribute NFS workloads and add some parallelism to the connection, which helps the NFS server handle
the workloads more efficiently. In ONTAP, when an NFS mount is established, a Connection ID (CID) is
created. That CID provides up to 128 concurrent in-flight operations. When that number is exceeded by
the client, ONTAP enacts a form of flow control until it can free up some available resources as other
operations complete. These pauses usually are only a few microseconds, but over the course of millions
of operations, those can add up and create performance issues. Nconnect can take the 128 limit and
multiply it by the number of nconnect sessions on the client, which provides more concurrent operations
per CID and can potentially add performance benefits, as seen in Table 15.
Figure 16 illustrates how mounts without nconnect handle concurrent operations and how nconnect works
to distribute operations to NFS mounts.

Figure 16) NFS mounts with and without nconnect

To determine whether nconnect is indeed working in your environment, you can verify a few things.
When nconnect is not being used, a single CID is established per client mount. You can verify those cids
by running the following command:
cluster::> network connections active show -node [nodes] -service nfs* -remote-host [hostname]

For example, this is the output from an active NFS connection without nconnect:

86 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
cluster::> network connections active show -node * -service nfs* -remote-host centos83-
perf.ntap.local
Vserver Interface Remote
Name Name:Local Port Host:Port Protocol/Service
---------- ---------------------- ---------------------------- ----------------
Node: node1
DEMO data1:2049 centos83-perf.ntap.local:1013
TCP/nfs

When nconnect is in use, more cids per mount are present. In this example, we used nconnect=8.
cluster::> network connections active show -node * -service nfs* -remote-host centos83-
perf.ntap.local
Vserver Interface Remote
Name Name:Local Port Host:Port Protocol/Service
---------- ---------------------- ---------------------------- ----------------
Node: node1
DEMO data1:2049 centos83-perf.ntap.local:669 TCP/nfs
DEMO data1:2049 centos83-perf.ntap.local:875 TCP/nfs
DEMO data1:2049 centos83-perf.ntap.local:765 TCP/nfs
DEMO data1:2049 centos83-perf.ntap.local:750 TCP/nfs
DEMO data1:2049 centos83-perf.ntap.local:779 TCP/nfs
DEMO data1:2049 centos83-perf.ntap.local:773 TCP/nfs
DEMO data1:2049 centos83-perf.ntap.local:809 TCP/nfs
DEMO data1:2049 centos83-perf.ntap.local:897 TCP/nfs

Another way to determine whether nconnect is being used is through a statistics capture for the CID
object. You can start the statistics for that object by running the following command:
cluster::> set diag
cluster::*> statistics start -object cid

When that object runs, it tracks the number of total allocated cids (alloc_total).
For example, this is the number of alloc_total for a mount without nconnect:
cluster::*> statistics show -object cid -counter alloc_total

Counter Value
-------------------------------- --------------------------------
alloc_total 11

This is from a mount with nconnect=4:

cluster::*> statistics show -object cid -counter alloc_total

Counter Value
-------------------------------- --------------------------------
alloc_total 16

This is the alloc_total from nconnect=8:

cluster::*> statistics show -object cid -counter alloc_total

Counter Value
-------------------------------- --------------------------------
alloc_total 24

Hard/soft
The hard or soft mount options specify whether the program using a file using NFS should stop and wait
(hard) for the server to come back online if the NFS server is unavailable or if it should report an error
(soft).
If hard is specified, processes directed to an NFS mount that is unavailable cannot be terminated unless
the intr option is also specified.

87 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
If soft is specified, the timeo=<value> option can be specified, where <value> is the number of seconds
before an error is reported.
Note: For business-critical NFS exports, NetApp recommends using hard mounts.

Intr/nointr
The intr option allows NFS processes to be interrupted when a mount is specified as a hard mount. This
policy is deprecated in new clients such as RHEL 6.4 and is hardcoded to nointr. Kill -9 is the only way to
interrupt a process in newer kernels.
Note: For business-critical NFS exports, NetApp recommends using intr with hard mounts with NFS
clients that support it.

Logging, monitoring, and statistics

The following section covers ways to view logs and set up monitoring for NFS-specific environments, as
well as managing NFS operations.

Managing NFS locks

ONTAP NFS servers keep track of locks when they are established by a NAS client. If desired, storage
administrators can view and break locks using the following command from Advanced Privilege.
cluster::*> vserver locks
break show

Additionally, to specify NFSv4.x locks, run the following command from Diag Privilege:
cluster::*> vserver locks nfsv4 show

NFS events: Event messaging system

Data ONTAP provides a messaging system that keeps track of events within the cluster. These offer
summaries of informational, warning and error conditions across all subsystems.
Event messaging system (EMS) logs can be viewed by using ONTAP System Manager (Figure 17), as
well as from the CLI by running the following command:
cluster::> event log show

NFS events cover a wide array of subsystems, from general NFS events (such as exports or other errors)
to name service and authentication issues. Event names can be filtered by portions of the event message
name in the CLI and in the GUI.
cluster::*> event log show -message-name nblade.nfs*
Time Node Severity Event
------------------- ---------------- ------------- ---------------------------
5/11/2020 18:37:50 node2
NOTICE nblade.nfs4SequenceInvalid: NFS client (IP:
x.x.x.x) sent sequence# 1, but server expected sequence# 2. Server error: OLD_STATEID.
5/11/2020 18:35:52 node1
NOTICE nblade.nfs4SequenceInvalid: NFS client (IP:
x.x.x.y) sent sequence# 1, but server expected sequence# 2. Server error: OLD_STATEID.
5/11/2020 18:34:23 node2
NOTICE nblade.nfs4SequenceInvalid: NFS client (IP:
x.x.x.x) sent sequence# 1, but server expected sequence# 2. Server error: OLD_STATEID.

88 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Figure 17) Filtering events in ONTAP System Manager UI.

EMS events are triggered with a severity level, which lets you know which messages are important (such
as ERROR and EMERGENCY) and which messages are simply informative (such as INFORMATIONAL
and NOTICE). In general, DEBUG-level messages can be ignored unless there are other noticeable
issues occurring in the environment. If you see messages ERROR, ALERT or EMERGENCY, it might be
worth opening a support case.
You can filter based on severity, message name, and other variables. The following event log commands
can show NFS/multiprotocol NAS-relevant EMS events:
cluster::> event log show -message-name dns*
cluster::> event log show -message-name *export*
cluster::> event log show -message-name ldap*
cluster::> event log show -message-name mgmt.nfs*
cluster::> event log show -message-name nameserv*
cluster::> event log show -message-name nblade*
cluster::> event log show -message-name netgroup*
cluster::> event log show -message-name *nfs*
cluster::> event log show -message-name secd*

NFS statistics
Statistics for NFS are collected within the ONTAP Counter Manager archives and can be viewed by using
ONTAP System Manager for up to a year. Additionally, general NFS statistic captures can be done from
Active IQ Performance Manager, as well as using third-party performance monitoring tools such as
Grafana with NetApp Harvest.
If individual performance counters for NFS are desired, use the statistics start command to enable
captures for a specific counter object or for multiple objects. After the statistics counters are started, they
will run until you stop them. These are most useful to run during periods where performance might be
suffering, or if you wish to see the workload trends for a specific volume.

Determining what type of VM is hosted on NFS

It is possible to determine what type of VM is accessing the storage by using statistics captured in the
counter manager. Run the following commands to show the statistics. These are available in Diagnostic
Privilege.
cluster::> set diag
cluster::*> statistics start -object wafl -counter wafl_nfs_application_mask
cluster::*> statistics show -object wafl -counter wafl_nfs_application_mask -raw

The output of these statistics shows masks for specific VM types (Table 16).

89 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Table 16) VM statistic masks.
VM Type Mask
None 0
ESX/ESXi 1
Citrix Xen 2
Red Hat KVM 4

If more than one VM application is being used, then the masks are added together to determine which
ones are in use. For example, if ESX/ESXi and Red Hat KVM are in use, then the masks would be 1 + 4
= 5.

Determining if Oracle is in use

Additionally, the WAFL counters can determine if Oracle data is hosted on NFS.
cluster::> set diag
cluster::*> statistics start -object wafl -counter wafl_nfs_oracle_wcount
cluster::*> statistics show -object wafl -counter wafl_nfs_oracle_wcount -raw

Performance monitoring enhancements in ONTAP 9.0 and later

ONTAP 9.0 and later introduced some performance monitoring enhancements that can aid storage
administrators in performance monitoring and proactive performance management.
Note: For a complete list of performance counters, objects, and instances, run the statistics
catalog command, found at Advanced Privilege.

Top clients
ONTAP provides the ability to track the top NAS clients writing data to a cluster by using the new ONTAP
9 feature called top clients. This feature tracks the overall incoming operations and lists the client IP
address, NAS protocol being used, total IOPS, node being accessed, and the SVM to which the client is
connecting.
You can also watch the top clients in real time by using the command line with the admin privilege
command statistics top client show. This command allows you to specify a minimum of 30-
second intervals, the number of iterations to show, as well as the maximum number of clients that should
be displayed. In the following example, a Python file create script was run from two clients to a NetApp
FlexGroup volume over NFSv3 to show an example of what to expect from the command’s output.
cluster::> statistics top client show -interval 30 -iterations 5 -max 10

cluster : 6/26/2017 17:42:27

*Estimated
Total
IOPS Protocol Node Vserver Client
---------- -------- ------------------ ------- -------------
23010 nfs node01 DEMO x.x.x.b
20006 nfs node02 DEMO x.x.x.c
17 cifs node02 CIFS
x.x.x.d

By default, the CLI orders by IOPS. It’s also possible to order by throughput by using the -sort-key
option.
For example:
cluster::> statistics top client show -interval 30 -iterations 5 -max 10 -sort-key write_data

cluster : 6/26/2017 18:04:53

90 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
*Estimated
Write
Data (Bps) Protocol Node Vserver Client
---------- -------- ------------------ ------- -------------
154968 nfs node01 DEMO x.x.x.b
150400 nfs node02 DEMO x.x.x.c

Hot files/top files

In addition to exposing the top clients accessing a cluster, ONTAP can also show the top files in use on a
cluster. This can be particularly useful when dealing with ESX/virtualized environments, where a single
ESX server might be hosting hundreds of VMs on a single NFS mounted datastore. In that scenario, the
top clients feature would not be as useful as knowing which files are doing the most work. ONTAP can
expose that information all the way down to the VMDK level.
In the following example, this ONTAP cluster is hosting a number of ESXi 6.0 VMs on an NFS-mounted
datastore. Again, we can see this information in ONTAP System Manager, as well as in the CLI.
From the CLI, the command is statistics top file show at Admin Privilege. In the following
example, we see Active IQ Unified Manager VMDK as the top consumer of write throughput and IOPS:
cluster::> statistics top file show -interval 30 -iterations 1

cluster : 6/26/2017 18:01:21

*Estimated
Total
IOPS Node Vserver Volume File
---------- ----------------- ------- ---------- ----------------------------------------
48 node03 vmware datastore1 /stme-ocum-01_1/stme-ocum-01_2-flat.vmdk
31 node03 vmware datastore1 /OCUM722-MP/OCUM722-MP_2-flat.vmdk

cluster::> statistics top file show -interval 30 -iterations 1 -max 10 -sort-key write_data

cluster : 6/26/2017 18:05:04

*Estimated
Write
Data (Bps) Node Vserver Volume File
---------- ----------------- ------- ---------- --------------------------------------------
685600 node03 vmware datastore1 /Parisi OCUM 7.2/Parisi OCUM 7.2_2-flat.vmdk
159475 node03 vmware datastore1 /stme-ocum-01_1/stme-ocum-01_2-flat.vmdk

Note: The above example is a lab environment. Results vary depending on workload.

Supported counters with top files

The top files statistic has support for the following counters:
Object: top_file
Counter Description
--------------------------- ----------------------------------------------
other_ops Estimated Other Operations
read_data Estimated Bytes From Read Operations
read_ops Estimated Read Operations
total_data Estimated Total Bytes From All Operations
total_ops Estimated Total Operations
write_data Estimated Bytes From Write Operations
write_ops Estimated Write Operations

If you attempt to use an unsupported counter (such as latency) with sort-key, the following is displayed:
cluster::*> statistics top file show -interval 30 -iterations 1 -max 10 -sort-key latency

Error: command failed: Unsupported sort-key counter: only "selector" counters are valid for
statistically tracked objects. For a list of valid sort-key counters, use this diagnostic
command: "statistics catalog counter show -object top_file -properties *selector*"

91 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Viewing storepool allocations
In some cases, you might need to view NFSv4.x storepool allocations, usually if you suspect a
performance problem is due to running out of storepool resources or if you’re unable to access NFSv4
mounts.
See these additional examples of issues with storepool exhaustion:
• 1051413 - Exhaustion of nblade nfsv4 storepool resources
• 1077736 - NFS storepool string exhaustion might occur while running NFSv4 traffic
• 1158309 - NFSv4 resource exhaustion might occur on storePool_StringAlloc
• 1312769 - Nfsv4.1 Mount fails when StoreTypeSessionConnectionHolder storepool exhausts
When storepool exhaustion occurs, an EMS message (Nblade.nfsV4PoolExhaust) is triggered in ONTAP
8.2.3 and later.
For further details on storepool objects, see the following:
• The Difference Between storePool and Lock Manager Objects
• Unable to access NFSv4 files due to storepool exhaustion
To view storepool objects, run the following commands:
cluster::> set diag
cluster::*> statistics start -object nfsv4_diag
cluster::*> statistics show -object nfsv4_diag -counter *storePool_* -raw

To identify an offending client, use SSH to send this command to ONTAP:

“set d -c off; rows 0; vserver locks nfsv4 show -inst; quit" | tee locks.txt | grep -i "client
name" | sort | uniq -c | sort -n"

If you suspect an issue with storepool exhaustion, contact NetApp support. In general, run the latest
available ONTAP releases when using NFSv4.x.

Viewing NFS usage

You can see how many RPC calls have been issued per NFS version on a local node. The values are
persistent and clear only when the node reboots. This command is available only from diagnostic
privilege level and must be issued on the local node.
cluster::> set diag
cluster::*> system node nfs usage show
Node: node2
v3: 120
v4: 2076

Viewing active NFS connections in the cluster

In ONTAP, it is possible to view active NFS connections across all SVMs and nodes in the cluster by
using the network connections active show command. This command allows filtering of IPs,
services, and other features to provide more useful and granular information. The command can be used
in place of the classic netstat commands found in 7-Mode.
For example:
cluster::> network connections active show
show show-clients show-lifs show-protocols show-services

cluster::> network connections active show -node node1 -service nfs*

Vserver Interface Remote
CID Ctx Name Name:Local Port Host:Port Protocol/Service

92 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
--------- --- --------- ----------------- -------------------- ----------------
Node: node1
286571835 6 vs0 data:2049 x.x.x.z:763 TCP/nfs

cluster::> network connections active show -node node2 -service nfs*

There are no entries matching your query.

Additionally, it is possible to view network connections in a LISTEN state with network connections
listening show.

Mapping NFS clients to specific volumes

ONTAP 9.7 introduced a new command that allows storage administrators to see which clients are
mounted through NFS to specific volumes in the cluster.
The use cases vary, but usually fall under one of these scenarios:
• The need to discover who’s using a volume before performing migrations, cutovers, and so on
• Troubleshooting issues
• Load distribution
To view connected NFS clients:
cluster::> nfs connected-clients show ?
[ -instance | -fields <fieldname>, ... ]
[[-node] <nodename>] Node Name
[[-vserver] <vserver>] Vserver
[[-data-lif-ip] <IP Address>] Data LIF IP Address
[[-client-ip] <IP Address>] Client IP Address
[[-volume] <volume name>] Volume Accessed
[[-protocol] <Client Access Protocol>] Protocol Version
[ -idle-time <[<integer>d][<integer>h][<integer>m][<integer>s]> ] Idle Time (Sec)
[ -local-reqs <integer> ] Number of Local Reqs
[ -remote-reqs <integer> ] Number of Remote Reqs

ONTAP 9.8 allows you to see these clients from ONTAP System Manager. Either click the NFS Clients
link in the dashboard, or navigate to Hosts > NFS Clients in the left menu.

Figure 18) Viewing NFS client to volume mappings in ONTAP System Manager

For sample output, see “NFS connected-clients sample output.”

Advanced NFS concepts

This section covers NFS concepts that extend outside of the realm of basic configuration.

Umask
In NFS operations, permissions can be controlled through mode bits, which leverage numerical attributes
to determine file and folder access. These mode bits determine read, write, execute, and special
attributes. Numerically, these are represented as:
• Execute = 1

93 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
• Read = 2
• Write = 4
Total permissions are determined by adding or subtracting a combination of the preceding.
For example:
4 + 2 + 1 = 7 (can do everything)
4 + 2 = 6 (rw) and so on…

For more information about UNIX permissions, see UNIX Permissions Help.
Umask is a functionality that allows an administrator to restrict the level of permissions allowed to a client.
By default, the umask for most clients is set to 0022, which means that files created from that client are
assigned that umask. The umask is subtracted from the base permissions of the object. If a volume has
0777 permissions and is mounted using NFS to a client with a umask of 0022, objects written from the
client to that volume have 0755 access (0777 – 0022).
# umask
0022
# umask -S
u=rwx,g=rx,o=rx

However, many operating systems do not allow files to be created with execute permissions, but they do
allow folders to have the correct permissions. Thus, files created with a umask of 0022 might end up with
permissions of 0644.
The following is an example using RHEL 6.5:
# umask
0022
# cd /cdot
# mkdir umask_dir
# ls -la | grep umask_dir
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 4096 Apr 23 14:39 umask_dir

# touch umask_file
# ls -la | grep umask_file
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 0 Apr 23 14:39 umask_file

NFS user nfsnobody

In some cases, NFS clients might see file owner/group information show up in file listings as nfsnobody.
# ls -la | grep newfile
-rwxrwxrwx 1 nfsnobody nfsnobody 0 May 19 13:30 newfile.txt

When you list the file with numerics, you find that the owner:group is 65534.
# ls -lan | grep newfile
-rwxrwxrwx 1 65534 65534 0 May 19 13:30 newfile.txt

The user 65534 on most Linux clients is nfsnobody, but in ONTAP, that user is pcuser.
cluster::*> unix-user show -vserver DEMO -id 65534
User User Group Full
Vserver Name ID ID Name
-------------- --------------- ------ ------ --------------------------------
DEMO pcuser 65534 65534

It’s also the default anonymous user in export-policy rules.

cluster::*> export-policy rule show -vserver DEMO -policyname default -fields anon
vserver policyname ruleindex anon
------- ---------- --------- -----

94 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
DEMO default 1 65534
DEMO default 2 65534
DEMO default 3 65534

When you look at the file permissions from the ONTAP cluster, you might see that the UNIX owner is
indeed 65534, but that there are also Windows ACLs and owners that are different.
cluster::*> vserver security file-directory show -vserver DEMO -path /data/newfile.txt

Vserver: DEMO
File Path: /data/newfile.txt
File Inode Number: 7088
Security Style: ntfs
Effective Style: ntfs
DOS Attributes: 20
DOS Attributes in Text: ---A----
Expanded Dos Attributes: -
UNIX User Id: 65534
UNIX Group Id: 65534
UNIX Mode Bits: 777
UNIX Mode Bits in Text: rwxrwxrwx
ACLs: NTFS Security Descriptor
Control:0x8004
Owner:NTAP\ntfs
Group:NTAP\DomainUsers
DACL - ACEs
ALLOW-Everyone-0x1f01ff-(Inherited)

When nfsnobody or 65534 is displayed in the NFS listings, one of two things is more than likely
occurring:
• The volume that is being exported to NFS clients is also used by Windows SMB clients and the
Windows users writing to the shares don’t map to valid UNIX users and/or groups.
• The volume that is being exported to NFS clients has the anonymous user set to 65534 and
something is causing the NFS user to squash to the anonymous user. For more information about
squashing, see “The anon user.”
You can view the Windows-user-to-UNIX-user mapping by running the following command in Advanced
Privilege:
cluster::*> access-check name-mapping show -vserver DEMO -direction win-unix -name ntfs
'ntfs' maps to 'pcuser'

cluster::*> access-check name-mapping show -vserver DEMO -direction win-unix -name prof1
'prof1' maps to 'prof1'

NFSv4.x: nobody:nobody
One of the most common issues seen with an NFSv4.x configuration is when a file or folder is shown in a
listing using ls as being owned by the user:group combination of nobody:nobody.
For example:
sh-4.2$ ls -la | grep prof1-file
-rw-r--r-- 1 nobody nobody 0 Apr 24 13:25 prof1-file

And the numeric ID is 99.

sh-4.2$ ls -lan | grep prof1-file
-rw-r--r-- 1 99 99 0 Apr 24 13:25 prof1-file

On the cluster (and using NFSv3), that file ownership appears to have a proper UID/GID.
cluster::*> vserver security file-directory show -vserver DEMO -path /home/prof1/prof1-file

95 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
 Vserver: DEMO
File Path: /home/prof1/prof1-file
File Inode Number: 9996
Security Style: unix
Effective Style: unix
DOS Attributes: 20
DOS Attributes in Text: ---A----
Expanded Dos Attributes: -
UNIX User Id: 1002
UNIX Group Id: 10002
UNIX Mode Bits: 644
UNIX Mode Bits in Text: rw-r--r--
ACLs: -

In some instances, the file might show the correct owner, but nobody as the group.
sh-4.2$ ls -la | grep newfile1
-rw-r--r-- 1 prof1 nobody 0 Oct 9 2019 newfile1

Who is nobody anyway?

The nobody user in NFSv4.x is different from the nfsnobody user mentioned in “NFS user nfsnobody.”
You can view how an NFS client sees each user by running the id command.
# id nobody
uid=99(nobody) gid=99(nobody) groups=99(nobody)
# id nfsnobody
uid=65534(nfsnobody) gid=65534(nfsnobody) groups=65534(nfsnobody)

With NFSv4.x, the nobody user is the default user defined by the idmapd.conf file and can be defined
as any user you want to use.
# cat /etc/idmapd.conf | grep nobody
#Nobody-User = nobody
#Nobody-Group = nobody

Why does this happen?

Because security through name string mapping is a key tenet of NFSv4.x operations, the default behavior
when a name string does not match properly is to squash that user to one that won’t normally have any
access to files and folders owned by users and groups.
When you see nobody for the user and/or group in file listings, that generally means something in
NFSv4.x is misconfigured. Case sensitivity can come into play here.
For example, if [email protected] (uid 1234, gid 1234) is accessing an export, then ONTAP must be
able to find [email protected] (uid 1234, gid 1234). If the user in ONTAP is [email protected],
then it won’t match. In many cases, you can see the following in the messages file on the client:
May 19 13:14:29 centos7 nfsidmap[17481]: nss_getpwnam: name '[email protected]' does not
map into domain 'NTAP.LOCAL'
May 19 13:15:05 centos7 nfsidmap[17534]: nss_getpwnam: name 'nobody' does not map into domain
'NTAP.LOCAL'

The client and server must both agree that a user is indeed who they are claiming to be, so the following
should be checked to ensure that the user that the client sees has the same information as the user that
ONTAP sees.
• NFSv4.x ID domain (Client: idmapd.conf file; ONTAP: -v4-id-domain option)
• User name and numeric IDs (name service switch configuration – client: nsswitch.conf and/or
local passwd and group files; ONTAP: ns-switch commands)

96 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
• Group name and numeric IDs (Name service switch configuration – client: nsswitch.conf and/or
local passwd and group files; ONTAP: ns-switch commands)
In almost all cases, if you see nobody in user and group listings from clients but ONTAP reports the
correct user and group information (through vserver security file-directory show), the issue is user or
group name domain ID translation.
You can also make use of the ONTAP option -v4-numeric-ids, covered in “Bypassing the name string
– Numeric IDs.”

Viewing name ID strings for NFSv4.x on clients

If you are using NFSv4.x, there is a name-string mapping that takes place during NFS operations. If the
name string doesn’t match, then you see issues as described in the section “NFSv4.x: nobody:nobody.”
In addition to using /var/log/messages to find an issue with NFSv4 IDs, you can use the nfsidmap
-l command on the NFS client to view which usernames have properly mapped to the NFSv4 domain.
For example, this is output of the command after a user that exists in both the client and ONTAP SVM
accesses an NFSv4.x mount:
# nfsidmap -l
4 .id_resolver keys found:
gid:[email protected]
uid:[email protected]
gid:[email protected]
uid:[email protected]

When a user that does not map properly into the NFSv4 ID domain (in this case, netapp-user) tries to
access the same mount and touches a file, they get assigned nobody:nobody, as expected.
# su netapp-user
sh-4.2$ id
uid=482600012(netapp-user), 2000(secondary)
sh-4.2$ cd /mnt/nfs4/
sh-4.2$ touch newfile
sh-4.2$ ls -la
total 16
drwxrwxrwx 5 root root 4096 Jan 14 17:13 .
drwxr-xr-x. 8 root root 81 Jan 14 10:02 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 nobody nobody 0 Jan 14 17:13 newfile
drwxrwxrwx 2 root root 4096 Jan 13 13:20 qtree1
drwxrwxrwx 2 root root 4096 Jan 13 13:13 qtree2
drwxr-xr-x 2 nfs4 daemon 4096 Jan 11 14:30 testdir

The nfsidmap -l output shows the user pcuser in the display, but not netapp-user; this is the
anonymous user in our export-policy rule (65534).
# nfsidmap -l
6 .id_resolver keys found:
gid:[email protected]
uid:[email protected]
gid:[email protected]
uid:[email protected]
gid:[email protected]
uid:[email protected]

Hiding Snapshot copies

A NetApp Snapshot copy is a read-only, point-in-time (PiT) image of a volume. The image consumes
minimal storage space and incurs negligible performance overhead because it records only changes to
files since the last Snapshot copy was made.

97 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Users can access Snapshot copies to restore individual files from NFS clients. In some workloads
however, applications might list the contents of the NFS mount. In some cases, the .snapshot directory
gets included, which can add considerable time to these scans – especially in high file count
environments. In those cases, the Snapshot directory can be hidden from NFS mounts using the NFS
server option -v3-hide-snapshot.
As evidenced by the command, this only impacts NFSv3 clients, as the .snapshot directory is already
hidden for NFSv4.x.
Even when the .snapshot directory is hidden, it is still accessible. To remove access to the .snapshot
directory to clients, use the volume option -snapdir-access.
Note: These options don’t take effect until the export is remounted.

Viewing and managing NFS credentials

In ONTAP 9.3, a global cache for name services was implemented to offer better performance, reliability,
resilience, and supportability for NAS credentials and name service server management.
Part of those changes was the implementation of the NFS credential cache, which stores NFS user and
group information in ONTAP when NFS exports are accessed.
These caches can be viewed and managed through the Advanced Privilege nfs credentials
commands.
cluster::*> nfs credentials ?
count *Count credentials cached by NFS
flush *Flush credentials cached by NFS
show *Show credentials cached by NFS

Cache entries will populate the node where the TCP connection for the NFS mount exists. This
information can be seen through the following command on the cluster:
cluster::*> nfs connected-clients show -vserver DEMO -client-ip x.x.x.x -fields data-lif-ip -
volume scripts
node vserver data-lif-ip client-ip volume protocol
------------------ ------- ------------- ------------- ------- --------
Node1 DEMO x.x.x.y x.x.x.x scripts nfs3

From the command above, we know the client IP x.x.x.x is connected to a data LIF on node1. That
helps us narrow down which node to focus on for cache entries.
The nfs credentials count command allows you to see how many credentials are currently stored
in the NFS credential cache. This can be useful in understanding the impact of clearing the cache.
cluster::*> nfs credentials count -node node1
Number of credentials cached by NFS on node "node1": 4

If a user traverses into an ONTAP NFS export, user IDs, group IDs, and so on are all added to the NFS
credential cache. For example, we have a user named prof1.
# id prof1
uid=1102(prof1) gid=10002(ProfGroup) groups=10002(ProfGroup),10000(Domain
Users),1202(group2),1101(group1),1220(sharedgroup),1203(group3)

That user has eight different entries – a numeric UID and seven group memberships. Then, the user
prof1 accesses an NFS export. Our credential cache increases by eight.
cluster::*> nfs credentials count -node node1
Number of credentials cached by NFS on node "node1": 12

That count is for the entire node – not just per SVM. If you have multiple SVMs in your environment, the
count might not be useful for troubleshooting.

98 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Viewing the NFS credential cache
In addition to showing how many credentials are in the NFS credential cache, we can also view individual
cache entries for users and/or groups. If a user in your environment complains about having access
issues, you can look for that user in the cache.
Note: You cannot view the contents of entire credential cache.
In this example, prof1 accessed the mount. You can see that cache entry, as well as the flags that tell
us more about the cache entry.
cluster::*> nfs credentials show -node node1 -vserver DEMO -unix-user-name prof1

Credentials
-----------
Node: node1
Vserver: DEMO
Client IP: -
Flags: unix-extended-creds-present, id-name-mapping-present
Time since Last Refresh: 52s
Time since Last Access: 44s
Hit Count: 4

UNIX Credentials:
Flags: 1
Domain ID: 0
UID: 1102
Primary GID: 10002
Additional GIDs: 10002
10000
1101
1202
1203
1220

Windows Credentials:
Flags: -
User SID: -
Primary Group SID: -
Domain SIDs: -

ID-Name Information:
Type: user
ID: 1102
Name: prof1

You can also see an entry for the user’s primary group.
cluster::*> nfs credentials show -node node1 -vserver DEMO -unix-group-name ProfGroup

Credentials
-----------
Node: node1
Vserver: DEMO
Client IP: -
Flags: id-name-mapping-present
Time since Last Refresh: 64s
Time since Last Access: 6s
Hit Count: 2

UNIX Credentials:
Flags: -
Domain ID: -
UID: -
Primary GID: -
Additional GIDs: -

Windows Credentials:
Flags: -

99 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
 User SID: -
Primary Group SID: -
Domain SIDs: -

ID-Name Information:
Type: group
ID: 10002
Name: ProfGroup

You can also view credential cache entries for users and groups down to the client IP that tried the
access.
cluster::*> nfs credentials show -node node1 -vserver DEMO -client-ip x.x.x.x -unix-user-id 1102

Credentials
-----------
Node: node1
Vserver: DEMO
Client IP: x.x.x.x
Flags: unix-extended-creds-present, id-name-mapping-present
Time since Last Refresh: 35s
Time since Last Access: 34s
Hit Count: 2
Reference Count: 4
Result of Last Update Attempt: no error

UNIX Credentials:
Flags: 1
Domain ID: 0
UID: 1102
Primary GID: 10002
Additional GIDs: 10002
10000
1101
1202
1203
1220

Windows Credentials:
Flags: -
User SID: -
Primary Group SID: -
Domain SIDs: -

ID-Name Information:
Type: user
ID: 1102
Name: prof1

The credential cache also keeps negative entries (entries that could not be resolved) in cache. Negative
entries occur when ONTAP can’t resolve the numeric UID to a valid user. In this case, the UID 1236
cannot be resolved by ONTAP, but attempted access to the NFS export.
# su cifsuser
bash-4.2$ cd /scripts/
bash: cd: /scripts/: Permission denied
bash-4.2$ id
uid=1236(cifsuser) gid=1236(cifsuser) groups=1236(cifsuser)

cluster::*> nfs credentials show -node node1 -vserver DEMO -unix-user-id 1236

Credentials
-----------
Node: node1
Vserver: DEMO
Client IP: -
Flags: no-unix-extended-creds, no-id-name-mapping
Time since Last Refresh: 33s
Time since Last Access: 7s

100 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
 Hit Count: 15

UNIX Credentials:
Flags: -
Domain ID: -
UID: -
Primary GID: -
Additional GIDs: -

Windows Credentials:
Flags: -
User SID: -
Primary Group SID: -
Domain SIDs: -

ID-Name Information:
Type: -
ID: -
Name: -

NFS credential cache with NFSv4.x and multiprotocol NAS

The NFS credential cache entries also store Windows credentials and NFSv4 ID mapping credentials.
When a user traverses NFSv4.x exports and maps into the ID domain correctly, we’d see the ID-Name
Information field populated:
Credentials
-----------
Node: node
Vserver: DEMO
Client IP: x.x.x.x
Flags: unix-extended-creds-present, id-name-mapping-present
Time since Last Refresh: 12s
Time since Last Access: 9s
Hit Count: 2
Reference Count: 4
Result of Last Update Attempt: no error

UNIX Credentials:
Flags: 1
Domain ID: 0
UID: 1102
Primary GID: 10002
Additional GIDs: 10002
10000
1101
1202
1203
1220

Windows Credentials:
Flags: -
User SID: -
Primary Group SID: -
Domain SIDs: -

ID-Name Information:
Type: user
ID: 1102
Name: prof1

If the user accesses an export that has NTFS permissions/security style, we’d see the flag cifs-creds-
present, as well as the domain SID information under Windows Credentials:
Credentials
-----------
Node: node1
Vserver: DEMO

101 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
 Client IP: x.x.x.x
Flags: ip-qualifier-configured, unix-extended-creds-present, cifs-creds-
present
Time since Last Refresh: 19s
Time since Last Access: 1s
Hit Count: 9
Reference Count: 2
Result of Last Update Attempt: no error

UNIX Credentials:
Flags: 0
Domain ID: 0
UID: 1102
Primary GID: 10002
Additional GIDs: 10002
10000
1101
1202
1203
1220

Windows Credentials:
Flags: 8320
User SID: S-1-5-21-3552729481-4032800560-2279794651-1214
Primary Group SID: S-1-5-21-3552729481-4032800560-2279794651-513
Domain SIDs: S-1-5-21-3552729481-4032800560-2279794651
S-1-18
S-1-1
S-1-5
S-1-5-32

ID-Name Information:
Type: -
ID: -
Name: -

NFS credential cache settings

The timeout value of the NFS credential cache is controlled by the NFS server options listed in Table 17.

Table 17) NFS credential cache settings.

Option What it does Default value (ms)

-cached-cred- This optional parameter specifies the age of the 7200000 (2 hours)
negative cached credentials after which they will be
negative-ttl
cleared from the cache. The value specified must be
between 60000 and 604800000.

-cached-cred- This optional parameter specifies the age of the 86400000

positive cached credentials after which they will be (24 hours)
positive-ttl
cleared from the cache. The value specified must be
between 60000 and 604800000.

-cached-cred- This optional parameter specifies the harvest timeout 86400000

for cached credentials. The value specified must be (24 hours)
harvest-timeout
between 60000 and 604800000.

Cache entries maintain the time since last access/refresh (as seen in the show command). If an entry
stays idle for a period of time, it is eventually removed from the cache. If the entry is active, it is refreshed
and stays in cache.
These values can be modified to longer or shorter timeout values, depending on the desired effects:
• Longer cache timeout values reduce network load and provide faster lookups of users, but can
produce more false positives/false negatives as the cache entries are not always in sync with name
services.

102 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
• Shorter cache timeout values increase load on the network and name servers, and can add some
latency to name lookups (depending on name service source), but offer more accurate and up-to-date
entries.
The best practice is to leave the values as is. If you need to change the values, be sure to monitor the
results and adjust as needed.

Flushing the NFS credential cache

In cases where a user has been added or removed from a group and does not have the desired access,
the credential cache entry can be flushed manually, rather than waiting for the cache entry to timeout.
The command can be run for a UNIX user or numeric ID or a UNIX group or numeric ID. Additionally, the
command can be run as granularly as down to the client IP address having the issue.
cluster::*> nfs credentials flush -node node1 -vserver DEMO -client-ip x.x.x.x -unix-user-id 1102

Number of matching credentials flushed: 2

Note: You can only flush one NFS credential cache entry at a time.
The NFS credential cache is separate from the name service cache. For information about managing the
name service caches, see TR-4835: How to Configure LDAP in ONTAP.

Using NFSv4.x ACLs with NFSv3 mounts

NFSv3, by default, has a fairly limited way to manage permissions. However, it is possible in ONTAP to
set NFSv4.x ACLs on files and folders and have them apply to NFSv3 exports.
The method for doing this is straightforward:
1. Configure and enable NFSv4.x in ONTAP and on your client.
2. Enable NFSv4.x ACL support in ONTAP.
3. Mount the export via NFSv4.x.
4. Apply the NFSv4.x ACLs.
5. Unmount and then remount the export using NFSv3 and test it out.
In the example environment, we mounted a homedir volume and then set up an ACL on a file owned by
root for a user called prof1 by using nfs4_setfacl -e (which allows you to edit a file rather than have
to type in a long command).
The file lives in the root user’s homedir. The root homedir is set to 755, which means anyone can read
them, but no one but the owner (root) can write to them.
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jul 13 10:42 root

That is, unless we set NFSv4.x ACLs to allow a user full control.
[root@centos7 mnt]# nfs4_getfacl /mnt/root/file
A::[email protected]:rwaxtTnNcCy
A::OWNER@:rwaxtTnNcCy
A:g:GROUP@:rxtncy
A::EVERYONE@:rxtncy

We can also see those permissions from the ONTAP CLI.

cluster::*> vserver security file-directory show -vserver DEMO -path /home/root/file

Vserver: DEMO
File Path: /home/root/file
File Inode Number: 8644
Security Style: unix

103 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
 Effective Style: unix
DOS Attributes: 20
DOS Attributes in Text: ---A----
Expanded Dos Attributes: -
UNIX User Id: 0
UNIX Group Id: 1
UNIX Mode Bits: 755
UNIX Mode Bits in Text: rwxr-xr-x
ACLs: NFSV4 Security Descriptor
Control:0x8014
DACL - ACEs
ALLOW-user-prof1-0x1601bf
ALLOW-OWNER@-0x1601bf
ALLOW-GROUP@-0x1200a9-IG
ALLOW-EVERYONE@-0x1200a9

In the above example, we provided prof1 full control over the file. We then mounted through NFSv3.
When you become a user that isn’t on the NFSv4.x ACL, you can’t write to the file or remove the file (the
expected behavior).
[root@centos7 /]# su student1
sh-4.2$ cd /mnt/root
sh-4.2$ ls -la
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jul 13 10:42 .
drwxrwxrwx 11 root root 4096 Jul 10 10:04 ..
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root bin 0 Jul 13 10:23 file
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 0 Mar 29 11:37 test.txt

sh-4.2$ touch file

touch: cannot touch ‘file’: Permission denied
sh-4.2$ rm file
rm: remove write-protected regular empty file ‘file’? y
rm: cannot remove ‘file’: Permission denied

When you change to the prof1 user, you have access to do whatever we want, even though the mode
bit permissions in v3 say you shouldn’t be able to. That’s because the NFSv4.x ACL is working:
[root@centos7 /]# su prof1
sh-4.2$ cd /mnt/root
sh-4.2$ ls -la
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jul 13 10:42 .
drwxrwxrwx 11 root root 4096 Jul 10 10:04 ..
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root bin 0 Jul 13 10:23 file
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 0 Mar 29 11:37 test.txt

sh-4.2$ vi file
sh-4.2$ cat file
NFSv4ACLS!

When we do a chmod, however, nothing seems to change from the NFSv4 ACL for the user. We set 700
on the file, which showed up in NFSv3 mode bits.
sh-4.2$ chmod 700 file
sh-4.2$ ls -la
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jul 13 10:42 .
drwxrwxrwx 11 root root 4096 Jul 10 10:04 ..
-rwx------ 1 root bin 11 Aug 11 09:58 file
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 0 Mar 29 11:37 test.txt

But notice how the prof1 user still has full control.
cluster::*> vserver security file-directory show -vserver DEMO -path /home/root/file

Vserver: DEMO
File Path: /home/root/file

104 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
 File Inode Number: 8644
Security Style: unix
Effective Style: unix
DOS Attributes: 20
DOS Attributes in Text: ---A----
Expanded Dos Attributes: -
UNIX User Id: 0
UNIX Group Id: 1
UNIX Mode Bits: 700
UNIX Mode Bits in Text: rwx------
ACLs: NFSV4 Security Descriptor
Control:0x8014
DACL - ACEs
ALLOW-user-prof1-0x1601bf
ALLOW-OWNER@-0x1601bf
ALLOW-GROUP@-0x120088-IG
ALLOW-EVERYONE@-0x120088

That’s because the NFSv4.x ACL preserve was enabled. If that option was disabled, chmod would wipe
the ACL.

Commands to troubleshoot permission issues

In most cases, NFS permission issues are fairly straightforward; NFSv3 uses basic RWX mode bits.
However, things can get complicated when NFSv4 ACLs and/or multiprotocol NAS access and different
security styles are involved. This section intends to show some useful commands for troubleshooting
permissions issues in NAS environments. For name service cache information, see the section “Viewing
and managing NFS credentials.” For more detailed information, see TR-4835: LDAP in NetApp ONTAP.

Verifying UNIX UIDs and group memberships

For NFSv3 operations, UNIX user names and group names aren’t hugely important, as the numerics can
be passed to verify identity. However, with NFSv4 and NTFS security style objects, numeric IDs need to
translate to valid UNIX user and group names for proper name resolution. For NFSv4, this is needed to
avoid squashing a user to nobody. In NTFS security styles, the UNIX user name is needed to map to a
valid Windows user name.
In ONTAP, there are a few commands you can use to see a UNIX user’s ID and group memberships.
For local UNIX users and groups, run the following commands:
cluster::> unix-user show
cluster::> unix-group show

For basic UID/GID information for all UNIX users (local and name services; Advanced Privilege), run the
following command:
cluster::*> access-check authentication show-ontap-admin-unix-creds

Or:
cluster::*> getxxbyyy getpwbyname -node node1 -vserver DEMO -username prof1 -show-source true
(vserver services name-service getxxbyyy getpwbyname)
Source used for lookup: LDAP
pw_name: prof1
pw_passwd:
pw_uid: 1102
pw_gid: 10002
pw_gecos:
pw_dir:
pw_shell:

cluster::*> getxxbyyy getpwbyname -node node1 -vserver DEMO -username host -show-source true
(vserver services name-service getxxbyyy getpwbyname)
Source used for lookup: Files

105 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
pw_name: host
pw_passwd: *
pw_uid: 598
pw_gid: 0
pw_gecos:
pw_dir:
pw_shell:

To view user information and group memberships (local and name services; Advanced Privilege), run the
following commands:
cluster::*> getxxbyyy getgrlist -node node1 -vserver DEMO -username prof1
(vserver services name-service getxxbyyy getgrlist)
pw_name: prof1
Groups: 10002 10002 10000 1101 1202 1203 48

Viewing user and group information for multiprotocol users

If you have both CIFS/SMB and NFS configured in your environment, you can get a full list of user
names, name mapping, IDs, group names, privileges, and group memberships from a single command in
Advanced Privilege. This is the preferred command to use in multiprotocol environments. The command
does not work if there are no SMB/CIFS servers configured.
cluster::*> access-check authentication show-creds -node node1 -vserver DEMO -unix-user-name
prof1 -list-name true -list-id true
(vserver services access-check authentication show-creds)

UNIX UID: 1102 (prof1) <> Windows User: S-1-5-21-3552729481-4032800560-2279794651-1110

(NTAP\prof1 (Windows Domain User))

GID: 10002 (ProfGroup)

Supplementary GIDs:
10002 (ProfGroup)
10000 (Domain Users)
1101 (group1)
1202 (group2)
1203 (group3)
48 (apache-group)

Primary Group SID: S-1-5-21-3552729481-4032800560-2279794651-1111 NTAP\ProfGroup (Windows

Domain group)

Windows Membership:
S-1-5-21-3552729481-4032800560-2279794651-1301 NTAP\apache-group (Windows Domain group)
S-1-5-21-3552729481-4032800560-2279794651-1106 NTAP\group2 (Windows Domain group)
S-1-5-21-3552729481-4032800560-2279794651-513 NTAP\DomainUsers (Windows Domain group)
S-1-5-21-3552729481-4032800560-2279794651-1105 NTAP\group1 (Windows Domain group)
S-1-5-21-3552729481-4032800560-2279794651-1107 NTAP\group3 (Windows Domain group)
S-1-5-21-3552729481-4032800560-2279794651-1111 NTAP\ProfGroup (Windows Domain group)
S-1-5-21-3552729481-4032800560-2279794651-1231 NTAP\local-group.ntap (Windows Alias)
S-1-18-2 Service asserted identity (Windows Well known group)
S-1-5-32-551 BUILTIN\Backup Operators (Windows Alias)
S-1-5-32-544 BUILTIN\Administrators (Windows Alias)
S-1-5-32-545 BUILTIN\Users (Windows Alias)
User is also a member of Everyone, Authenticated Users, and Network Users

Privileges (0x22b7):
SeBackupPrivilege
SeRestorePrivilege
SeTakeOwnershipPrivilege
SeSecurityPrivilege
SeChangeNotifyPrivilege

106 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Showing file permissions as seen by ONTAP
When troubleshooting permissions issues, you might not have access to view permissions from a NAS
client. Or you might want to verify what the NAS client is seeing for permissions with what ONTAP is
seeing. To do that, you can run the following command:
cluster::> file-directory show -vserver DEMO -path /home/prof1
(vserver security file-directory show)

Vserver: DEMO
File Path: /home/prof1
File Inode Number: 8638
Security Style: ntfs
Effective Style: ntfs
DOS Attributes: 10
DOS Attributes in Text: ----D---
Expanded Dos Attributes: -
UNIX User Id: 0
UNIX Group Id: 0
UNIX Mode Bits: 777
UNIX Mode Bits in Text: rwxrwxrwx
ACLs: NTFS Security Descriptor
Control:0x8504
Owner:NTAP\prof1
Group:BUILTIN\Administrators
DACL - ACEs
ALLOW-Everyone-0x1f01ff-OI|CI
ALLOW-NTAP\prof1-0x1f01ff-OI|CI
ALLOW-NTAP\sharedgroup-0x1200a9-OI|CI
ALLOW-NTAP\Administrator-0x1f01ff-OI|CI

You can also verify which effective permissions a specific user has to a specific file or directory.
cluster::> file-directory show-effective-permissions -vserver DEMO -unix-user-name prof1 -path
/home/prof1
(vserver security file-directory show-effective-permissions)

Vserver: DEMO
Windows User Name: NTAP\prof1
Unix User Name: prof1
File Path: /home/prof1
CIFS Share Path: -
Effective Permissions:
Effective File or Directory Permission: 0x1f01ff
Read
Write
Append
Read EA
Write EA
Execute
Delete Child
Read Attributes
Write Attributes
Delete
Read Control
Write DAC
Write Owner
Synchronize

Checking export policy access

In some cases, permissions issues might be due to the export policy settings. For example, if your policy
is set to allow only reads, then that might override any user permissions set on the mount.
ONTAP provides a way to check the export policy access for the client by running the following
command:

107 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
cluster::> export-policy check-access

Using security tracing

If you want to trace permissions issues as they occur, you can use the security trace filter functionality to
trace both NFS and SMB/CIFS permissions.
To create a trace filter, run the following command:
cluster::> vserver security trace filter create ?
-vserver <vserver name> Vserver
[-index] <integer> Filter Index
[[-protocols] {cifs|nfs}, ...] Protocols (default: cifs)
[ -client-ip <IP Address> ] Client IP Address to Match
[ -path <TextNoCase> ] Path
{ [ -windows-name <TextNoCase> ] Windows User Name
| [ -unix-name <TextNoCase> ] } UNIX User Name or User ID
[ -trace-allow {yes|no} ] Trace Allow Events (default: no)
[ -enabled {enabled|disabled} ] Filter Enabled (default: enabled)
[ -time-enabled {1..720} ] Minutes Filter is Enabled (default: 60)

If you desire, you can narrow the trace down to specific usernames or IP addresses.
cluster::*> vserver security trace filter modify -vserver DEMO -index 1 -protocols nfs -client-ip
x.x.x.x -trace-allow yes -enabled enabled

After the trace is created, you can see results in real time. When you view the results, you can filter by
successes, failures, user IDs, protocol, and more.
cluster::> vserver security trace trace-result show ?
[ -instance | -fields <fieldname>, ... ]
[[-node] <nodename>] Node
[ -vserver <vserver name> ] Vserver
[[-seqnum] <integer>] Sequence Number
[ -keytime <Date> ] Time
[ -index <integer> ] Index of the Filter
[ -client-ip <IP Address> ] Client IP Address
[ -path <TextNoCase> ] Path of the File Being Accessed
[ -win-user <TextNoCase> ] Windows User Name
[ -security-style <security style> ] Effective Security Style On File
[ -result <TextNoCase> ] Result of Security Checks
[ -unix-user <TextNoCase> ] UNIX User Name
[ -session-id <integer> ] CIFS Session ID
[ -share-name <TextNoCase> ] Accessed CIFS Share Name
[ -protocol {cifs|nfs} ] Protocol
[ -volume-name <TextNoCase> ] Accessed Volume Name

Here’s an example of what a permission/access failure would look like for a specific user:
cluster::> vserver security trace trace-result show -node * -vserver DEMO -unix-user 1102 -result
*denied*

Vserver: DEMO

Node Index Filter Details Reason

--------------- ----- -------------------------- ------------------------------
Node2 1 Security Style: UNIX and Access is denied. The
NFSv4 ACL requested permissions are not
granted by the ACE while
setting attributes. Access is
not granted for: "Write DAC"
Protocol: nfs
Volume: home
Share: -
Path: /dir
Win-User: -

108 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
 UNIX-User: 1102
Session-ID: -

Dynamic NAS TCP autotuning

ONTAP uses dynamic NAS TCP autotuning, which enables the NAS protocol stack to adjust buffer sizes
on the fly to the most optimal setting. This capability is needed because static methods to set TCP buffer
sizes do not consider the dynamic nature of networks nor the range of different types of connections
made to a system at one time. Autotuning is used to optimize the throughput of NAS TCP connections by
computing the application data read rate and the rate of the data being received by the system to
compute optimal buffer size. The feature is not configurable and only increases buffer sizes; buffers never
decrease. The starting value for this is 32K. Autotuning applies to individual TCP connections, rather than
on a global scale.
This not the same as the maximum transfer size value (-tcp-max-xfer-size) included under the NFS
server options.

Maximum transfer size settings in ONTAP 9 and later

In NetApp ONTAP 9 and later, -v3-tcp-max-read-size and -v3-tcp-max-write-size have been
deprecated. The NetApp recommendation is to leverage the option -tcp-max-xfer-size instead. This
change also allows TCP transfer sizes of 1MB for both reads and writes. ONTAP versions prior to ONTAP
9 only allowed 1MB for reads.
Note: If these values are adjusted, they affect only new mounts. Existing mounts maintain the block size
that was set at the time of the mount. If the sizes are changed, existing mounts can experience
rejections of write operations or smaller responses for reads than requested. Whenever you
change block size options, make sure that clients are unmounted and remounted to reflect those
changes. For more information, see bug 962596.

Why dynamic Window size?

Most environments do not benefit from static TCP window sizes, because window sizes are generally
considered in the context of a single host or connection. On a server, such as NFS running on ONTAP,
there are multiple connections to multiple hosts. Each connection has its own uniqueness and requires
varying degrees of throughput. With a static window, a server becomes extremely limited in how it can
handle the diversity of inbound connections. Participants in network infrastructures often change and
rarely are static; thus the TCP stack needs to be able to handle those participants in an efficient and
effective manner. Dynamic window sizes help prevent the caveats seen in static window environments,
such as overutilizing a network and creating a throughput collapse or underutilizing a network and
experiencing less operating efficiency over time.

Exec context throttling

When an NFS operation is sent from a client, ONTAP reserves a resource on the node as a placeholder.
This operation called an execution context (exec context). When the operation is finished, the exec
context is freed back to the system for use.
These resources are finite within a node and depend on factors such as the ONTAP version and
platform/memory. You can see the per-node limit of these values by running the following command:
cluster::> set diag
cluster::*> systemshell -node node1 -command "sysctl -a | grep preallocated"

Table 18 shows some examples of per-node values for available exec contexts.

109 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Table 18) Exec contexts per node.
Node type ONTAP version Total preallocated exec contexts
AFF8040 9.8 1500
AFF A300 9.9.1 3000
AFF A800 9.8 10000
FAS9000 9.9.1 10000

In addition to per-node limits, there is also a limit of 128 concurrent operations (assigned exec contexts)
per TCP CID. If a client sends more than 128 concurrent operations, ONTAP blocks those operations
until a new resource is freed up. By default, Linux clients are configured to send up to 65,536 of these
operations concurrently, so the limits can start to be reached relatively quickly.
The implications of this process are covered in more detail in “Identifying potential issues with RPC slot
tables.”
In some cases, a single client can be overwhelming a node’s WAFL layer with requests to the same
volume, which then increases latency in WAFL that increases the amount of time it takes to free up exec
contexts and release them back to the system. Thus reducing the total number of exec contexts available
to other workloads connecting to the same node. This is commonly seen in grid computing applications,
where many clients are sending NFS operations to the same volumes at once. For example, if every NFS
client is sending 128 concurrent operations at a time, then it would only take 24 clients to overwhelm the
limits.
ONTAP 9.9.1 introduces a new feature for platforms with >256GB of RAM that helps limit the impact that
bully workloads have on other workloads in the system when they send more concurrent operations than
supported by ONTAP. This new feature works by throttling back the number of available exec contexts for
all connections to prevent one workload from overrunning others. This throttling is based on the total
utilization of exec contexts on the node and helps scale back the operations to ensure the node totals
don’t get exceeded.

Table 19) Exec context throttle scale.

Node utilization of exec contexts Scale-back factor Per-connection exec limit
60% 1 128
70% 8 16
80% 16 8

After a node hits 70% of the total available exec contexts, each connection is only able to perform 16
concurrent operations until the node’s total utilization drops back to 60%. The exec limit then increases
back to 128.
Some considerations:
• This feature is only available in ONTAP 9.9.1 and later, and only on platforms with more than 256GB
of memory (such as the AFF A700, AFF A800, and FAS9000).
• These platforms also increase the total number of available exec contexts per node to 10,000.
Because throttling does not occur until over 6,000 execs are allocated (previous total exec limit was
3,000), existing workloads should not notice any negative difference in performance.
• This throttling does not help reduce the number of blocked exec contexts due to per-client overruns.
For tuning Linux clients and/or using nconnect, you should still follow the guidance in the “Network
connection concurrency and TCP slots: NFSv3” section.

110 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
How do I know if connections are being throttled?
If you are running ONTAP 9.9.1 on platforms with 256GB or greater memory, then exec throttling is
enabled by default. For all other platforms, this feature does not apply.
To view whether exec throttling is occurring on your cluster, start the exec_ctx statistics object.
cluster::> set diag
cluster::*> statistics start -object exec_ctx

Then, view the statistics. The following counters are displayed if exec throttling is in use:
• throttle_scale. The scale-back factor which is currently in effect (1, 8, or 16).
• throttle_increases. The number of times the scale-back factor has been increased.
• throttle_decreases. The number of time the scale-back factor has been decreased.
• throttle_hist. A histogram of allocations at each scale factor (incrementing counters in 1, 8, or 16).

Network connection concurrency and TCP slots: NFSv3

When an NFS mount is established from a client to an ONTAP NFS server, a CID is also established.
Each incoming NFS operation gets assigned a placeholder resource in ONTAP called an executive
context (exec_ctx or exec). As operations complete, the reserved execs are freed to the system for
use with a new incoming operation.
For each CID, ONTAP allows 128 execs to be used at any given moment. If a client sends more than
128 operations at a time, then ONTAP pushes back on that client until a new resource is freed. These
pushbacks are only microseconds per operation in most cases, but over the course of millions of requests
across hundreds of clients, the pushback can manifest into performance issues that don’t have the usual
signatures of performance issues on storage systems, such as protocol, disk or node latency. As a result,
isolating these issues can be difficult and time consuming.
Older Linux kernels (pre-RHEL 6.x days) had a static setting for RPC slot tables of 16. In newer Linux
clients, that setting was changed to a maximum of 65,536 and the NFS client would dynamically increase
the number of slot tables needed. As a result, newer NFS clients could potentially flood NFS servers with
more requests than they can handle at one time.
NFSv4.x operations are sent as compound requests (such as three or four NFS operations per packet)
and NFSv4.x sessions slots are used to parallelize requests instead of RPC slot tables. For more
information, see “NFSv4.x concurrency - session slots.”
Here are a few ways to address performance issue caused by slot tables:
• Add more NFSv3 mount points per client (use different locations in the volume to be effective)
• Throttle the number of NFSv3 requests a single client can send per TCP connection/session
• Use the nconnect mount option to get more TCP connections/sessions per mount (ensure both the
client and ONTAP versions support nconnect)
However, before you decide to address RPC slots in your environment it is important to remember that
lowering the RPC slot tables on an NFS client is effectively a form of throttling and can negatively affect
performance depending on the workload. An NFS client that needs to send one million NFS requests will
send those requests regardless of RPC slot table settings. Setting RPC slot tables is essentially telling
the NFS client to limit the number of requests it can send at any given time. The decision of whether to
throttle the NFS client or let the storage system enact a form of flow control depends on your workload
and use case.
Before adjusting these values, it’s important to test and identify if too many slot tables will cause
performance issues/impact to applications.

111 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Identifying potential issues with RPC slot tables
As previously mentioned, modern NFSv3 clients use dynamic values for RPC slot tables, which means
that the client will send as many concurrent operations on a single TCP session as possible—up to
65,336. However, ONTAP allows only 128 concurrent operations per TCP connection, so if a client sends
more than 128, ONTAP will enact a form of flow control on NFSv3 operations to prevent rogue clients
from overrunning storage systems by blocking the NFS operation (exec contexts in ONTAP) until
resources free up. This flow control can manifest as performance issues that cause extra latency and
slower job completion times that might not have a readily apparent reason from the general storage
system statistics. These issues can appear to be network related, which can send storage administrators
down the wrong troubleshooting path.
To investigate whether RPC slot tables might be involved, use the ONTAP performance counter. You can
verify whether the number of exec contexts blocked by the connection being overrun is incrementing.
To gather those statistics, run the following command:
statistics start -object cid -instance cid

Then, review the statistics over a period of time to see if they are incrementing.
statistics show -object cid -instance cid -counter execs_blocked_on_cid

On NFS clients, you can leverage the nfsiostat command to show active in-flight slot tables.
# nfsiostat [/mount/path] [interval seconds]

When you set lower RPC slot table values on a client, the RPC slot table queue shifts from the storage to
the client, so the rpc bklog values will be higher.
With the slot tables set to 128, the rpc bklog got as high as 360 when creating 5,000,000 files from two
clients and sent around 26,000 ops/s.
# nfsiostat /mnt/FGNFS 1 | grep "bklog" -A 1
ops/s rpc bklog
25319.000 354.091
--
ops/s rpc bklog
24945.000 351.105
--
ops/s rpc bklog
26022.000 360.763

But ONTAP didn’t have to block any of the incoming operations.

cluster::*> statistics show -object cid -counter execs_blocked_on_cid -sample-id
All_Multi1_bs65536

Counter Value
-------------------------------- --------------------------------
execs_blocked_on_cid 0

Counter Value
-------------------------------- --------------------------------
execs_blocked_on_cid 0

If the RPC slot table values are set to higher values, then the RPC queue (rpc bklog) will be lower on
the client. In this case, the slot tables were left as the default 65,536 value. The client backlog was 0 and
the ops/s were higher.
# nfsiostat /mnt/FGNFS 1 | grep "bklog" -A 1
ops/s rpc bklog
22308.303 0.000
--

112 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
 ops/s rpc bklog
30684.000 0.000

That means the storage would need to absorb more of those RPC calls because the client isn’t holding
back as many of those operations. We can see that in the ONTAP statistics.
cluster::*> statistics show -object cid -counter execs_blocked_on_cid -sample-id
All_Multi1_bs65536

Counter Value
-------------------------------- --------------------------------
execs_blocked_on_cid 145324

Counter Value
-------------------------------- --------------------------------
execs_blocked_on_cid 124982

When we exceed a certain number of blocked execs, we’ll log an EMS. The following EMS was
generated:
cluster::*> event log show -node tme-a300-efs01-0* -message-name nblade.execsOverLimit
Time Node Severity Event
------------------- ---------------- ------------- ---------------------------
4/8/2021 17:01:30 node1
ERROR nblade.execsOverLimit: The number of in-flight
requests from client with source IP x.x.x.x to destination LIF x.x.x.x (Vserver 20) is greater
than the maximum number of in-flight requests allowed (128). The client might see degraded
performance due to request throttling.

In general, if you aren’t seeing nblade.execOverLimit EMS events in ONTAP 9.8 and later, RPC slot
tables aren’t likely causing problems for your workloads. In ONTAP 9.7 and ealrlier, these events do not
exist, so you would want to monitor the CID stats and watch for large increments of
exec_blocked_on_cid. If you’re unsure if your environment is having an issue, contact NetApp
support.

Example #1: RPC slot table impact on performance – high file count workload
In the example shown in Figure 19, a script was run to create 18 million files across 180,000
subdirectories. This load generation was done from three clients to the same NFS mount. The goal was
to generate enough NFS operations with clients that had the default RPC slot table settings to cause
ONTAP to enter a flow-control scenario. Then the same scripts were run again on the same clients—but
with the RPC slot tables set to 128.
The result was that the default slot tables (65,536) generated 18 million execs_blocked_on_cid
events and added 3ms of latency to the workload versus the run with the lower RPC slot table setting
(128).

113 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Figure 19) Impact of RPC slot tables on NFSv3 performance.

Although 3ms might not seem like a lot of latency, it can add up over millions of operations, considerably
slowing down job completion.

Example #2: RPC slot table impact on performance – sequential I/O workload
In the section called “Performance examples for different TCP maximum transfer Window sizes,” we show
a number of tests that illustrate NFSv3 vs. NFSv4.1 performance differences, along with different
wsize/rsize mount option values. While running these tests, we also saw the negative effects of RPC slot
tables increasing the number of execs blocked on CIDs causing performance bottlenecks that added
14.4ms of write latency to some of the performance runs, which in turn added 5.5 minutes to the overall
job completion times.
The tests were run across two clients on a 10GB network, using a script that runs multiple dd operations
in parallel. Overall, eight folders with two 16GB files each were created and then read and deleted.
• When the RPC slots were set to the maximum dynamic value of 65,536, the dd operations took 20
minutes, 53 seconds.
• When the RPC slots were lowered to 128, the same script took just 15 minutes, 23 seconds.
With the 1MB wsize/rsize mount options and 65,536 RPC slots, the execs_blocked_on_cid
incremented to ~1,000 per node.
cluster::*> statistics show -object cid -counter execs_blocked_on_cid

Scope: node1

Counter Value
-------------------------------- --------------------------------
execs_blocked_on_cid 1001

Scope: node2

Counter Value
-------------------------------- --------------------------------
execs_blocked_on_cid 1063

Figure 20 shows the side-by-side comparison of latency, IOPS, and throughput for the jobs using a 1MB
wsize/rsize mount value.

114 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Figure 20) Parallel dd performance – NFSv3 and RPC slot tables; 1MB rsize/wsize.

Figure 21 shows the side-by-side comparison of latency, IOPS, and throughput for the jobs using a 256K
wsize/rsize mount value.

Figure 21) Parallel dd performance – NFSv3 and RPC slot tables; 256K rsize/wsize.

Table 20 shows the comparison of job times and latency with 65,536 and 128 RPC slots.

Table 20) Job comparisons - parallel dd with 65,536 and 128 RPC slots.
Test Average read Average write Completion time
latency (ms) latency (ms)
NFSv3 – 1MB wsize/rsize; 65,536 slot tables 9.2 (+3.2ms) 42.3 (+14.4ms) 20m53s (+5m30s)
NFSv3 – 1MB wsize/rsize; 128 slot tables 6 27.9 15m23s
NFSv3 – 256K wsize/rsize; 65,536 slot tables 1.3 (-.1ms) 3.9 (+1ms) 19m12s (+4m55s)
NFSv3 – 256K wsize/rsize; 128 slot tables 1.4 2.9 14m17s
NFSv3 – 64K wsize/rsize; 65,536 slot tables .2 (0ms) 3.4 (+1.2ms) 17m2s (+2m14s)
NFSv3 – 64K wsize/rsize; 128 slot tables .2 2.2 14m48s

Resolving issues with RPC slot tables

In some cases, slot tables on NFS clients don’t need to be adjusted at all, as the incrementing counters
might not be creating a performance issue. Keep in mind that if a client wants to send one million
requests to an ONTAP NFS mount, it will send those requests regardless of what the client is tuned to
send. The consideration is, where will the pushback come from: the client or the server?
Setting the RPC slot tables to 128 means that the client will only send 128 concurrent requests at a time
to the storage system and will hold any excess requests in its own queues, which can be viewed with the

115 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
nfsiostat command (for an example of nfsiostat, see “Identifying potential issues with RPC slot
tables”).
In some cases, that value might stop the incrementing exec counters in ONTAP (and suppress the EMS
messages), but performance might actually suffer depending on the client’s configuration and available
resources.
ONTAP cannot control the number of slot tables that a client sends per TCP session for NFSv3
operations. Therefore, if there is a performance issue caused by the client slot table settings, clients must
be configured to limit the maximum slot tables sent through NFS to no more than 128. The configuration
of this setting varies depending on the client OS version, the number of clients, and a remount required is
required for this to take effect. For more information on how to set the values for your client OS, contact
the client vendor.
As previously mentioned, the value to set the RPC slot tables to can vary depending on workload and
number of clients. For example, in the tests mentioned above, 128 RPC slots using a 1MB wsize/rsize
achieved a job completion time of 15 minutes, 23 seconds. Setting the RPC slots to 64 lowered that job
completion time to 14 minutes, 2 seconds. However, setting the value too low can have the opposite
effect, where the clients will be throttled unnecessarily. Test different values in your environment for the
best possible results.

Table 21) Job comparisons - parallel dd with 65,536, 128, and 64 RPC slots.
Test Average read Average write Completion time
latency (ms) latency (ms)
NFSv3 – 1MB wsize/rsize; 65,536 slot tables 9.2 (+3.2ms) 42.3 (+19.4ms) 20m53s (+6m51s)
NFSv3 – 1MB wsize/rsize; 128 slot tables 6 (-.3ms) 27.9 (+5ms) 15m23s (+1m21s)
NFSv3 – 1MB wsize/rsize; 64 slot tables 6.3 22.9 14m2s

It is possible to get more performance out of a client’s NFS connectivity by connecting more mount points
to different IP addresses in the cluster on the same client, but that approach can create complexity. For
example, rather than mounting a volume at SVM:/volumename, multiple mount points on the same client
across different folders and IP addresses in the volume could be created.
For example:
LIF1:/volumename/folder1
LIF2:/volumename/folder2
LIF3:/volumename/folder3

Using nconnect to avoid slot table exhaustion issues

Another possible option is to use the nconnect mount option available for some Linux distributions that
can perform multiplexing of NFSv3 over the same TCP connection. This option provides more available
concurrent sessions and better overall performance. For example, if you use nconnect=8, you get 128 rpc
slots * 8 sessions, for concurrency up to 1,024 slots. This also helps reduce the need to adjust client-side
slot table settings.
For example, a test run using NFSv3 and no nconnect applied to the NFS mount with the default 65,536
slot tables on the client showed the following:
• One million 4K files and 2,000 directories created by two clients in ~81 seconds
• A total of 835,324 execs blocked across two A300 AFF nodes
When the same test used nconnect=2, these were the results:
• One million 4K files and 2,000 directories created by two clients in ~82 seconds
• A total of 827,275 execs blocked across two A300 AFF nodes

116 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
The, the test was run with nconnect=8:
• One million 4K files and 2,000 directories created by two clients in ~85 seconds
• A total of zero execs blocked across two A300 AFF nodes
The file creation script used can be found here:
https://github.com/whyistheinternetbroken/NetAppFlexGroup/blob/master/file-create-hfc.py
Table 22 shows a side-by-side comparison of this particular test using different nconnect settings and
their results. It also illustrates the previously mentioned caveats – blocked exec contexts in ONTAP
do not always equate to worse performance and that nconnect can add performance based on the
number of sessions you specify and the workload in use. This set of tests were all run against ONTAP
9.9.1, which includes the new exec context throttle feature. Ten runs of each were used and averaged out
and the default client settings were used. Mount wsize and rsize used was 64K.
This was the workload makeup:
create_percent 33%
lookup_percent 33%
write_percent 33%

Table 22) High file count creation (one million files) – NFSv3 – with and without nconnect – default slot
tables.
Test Average completion time Average total execs blocked in
ONTAP
NFSv3 – no nconnect ~69.5 seconds 214770
NFSv3 – nconnect=2 ~70.14 seconds 88038
NFSv3 – nconnect=4 ~70.1 seconds 11658
NFSv3 – nconnect=8 ~71.8 seconds 0
NFSv3 – nconnect=16 ~71.7 seconds 0

In these tests, we can make the following observations:

• Nconnect doesn’t help much with this type of workload.
• Exec contexts being blocked can create performance issues (as described in “Example #1: RPC slot
table impact on performance – high file count workload”), but doesn’t always create performance
issues.
The same tests were run again using the 128 maximum RPC slot table setting and only without nconnect
and with nconnect=8. In this instance, throttling the RPC slot tables on the clients not only had a slightly
positive effect on performance for this workload’s average completion time, but it also had more
predictability. For instance, when the slot tables were set to 65,536, completion times out of 10 runs had a
wide variance - from 55.7 seconds to 81.7 seconds for this workload—whereas 128 slot tables kept
performance at a more consistent range of 68-71 seconds. This is because the storage never had to push
back on the NFS operations. With more clients added to the mix, the predictability becomes more
impactful, as one or two clients can potentially bully other clients into poor performance results –
especially in ONTAP releases prior to 9.9.1 (where exec context throttling was added to help mitigate
bully workloads).
When nconnect was added to these tests, the performance suffered a bit, because each client wasn’t
able to push as many NFS operations across the multiple TCP sessions because the client was throttled
to 128. If you plan on using nconnect for your workloads, you should consider not setting the RPC slot
table values on the clients at all and instead let nconnect spread the workload across TCP sessions.

117 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Table 23) High file count creation (one million files) – NFSv3 – with and without nconnect – 128 slot tables.
Test Average completion time Average total execs blocked in ONTAP
NFSv3 – no ~69.4 seconds 0
nconnect
NFSv3 – ~71.2 seconds 0
nconnect=8

When the slot tables were scaled back even further (to 16), the performance suffered significantly,
because the client is now sending just 16 requests at a time, so the script takes ~28.1 seconds more to
complete without nconnect. With nconnect, we were able to keep around the same average completion
time as the other tests with more slot tables (~70.6 seconds), as we get 16 slot tables per session (16 * 8
= 128), rather than 16 slot tables on a single session. Because we can send 128 operations per session
with nconnect and only 16 per session without, the performance is greatly improved when using nconnect
with this configuration. However, in environments with hundreds of clients, setting the slot tables to 16
might be the only way to avoid performance problems caused by slot table overruns.

Table 24) High file count creation (one million files) – NFSv3 – with and without nconnect – 16 slot tables.
Test Average completion time Average total execs blocked in ONTAP
NFSv3 – no ~99.3 seconds 0
nconnect
NFSv3 – ~70.6 seconds 0
nconnect=8

From these results, nconnect can provide a way to better distribute the RPC slot requests across TCP
connections without costing much in the way of performance and removing the need to adjust RPC slot
tables in environments that require high performance and a large number of NFS operations. For more
information about nconnect, see the section called “Nconnect.”
Note: Because of the variant nature of workloads and impacts to performance, you should always test
various client settings, mount options, and so on in your environment, because there is no single
correct NFS configuration.

Setting RPC slot tables for environments with large client counts
Although the ONTAP session limit for slot tables per TCP connection is 128, there are also node-level
limits for exec contexts that can be exceeded.
For example, if a single node can handle up to 3,000 exec contexts, and each TCP session can handle
up to 128 exec contexts, then you can have up to 24 concurrent TCP sessions maxing out the RPC slot
tables at any given time before the resources are exhausted and ONTAP has to pause to let the
resources release back for use (3,000/128 = 23.47). For examples of how to see the available exec
contexts per node, see “Exec context throttling.”
That does not mean that ONTAP can only support up to 24 clients per node; ONTAP supports up to
100,000 TCP connections per node (platform dependent). Rather, what this means is that if 24 or more
clients are sending the maximum allowed slot entries per connection (128) all at the same time to a single
node, then there will be some latency build up as ONTAP works to free up resources.
Table 25 shows examples of how many clients can send the maximum concurrent operations per
connection to a single node.

Table 25) Total clients at maximum concurrent operations (128) before node exec context exhaustion.
Node type Total available exec contexts Total clients sending maximum operations per
per node connection (128) per node
AFF8040 1,500 1,500/128 = ~11.7

118 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
 Node type Total available exec contexts Total clients sending maximum operations per
per node connection (128) per node
AFF A300 3,000 3,000/128 = ~23.4
AFF A800 10,000 10,000/128 = ~78.1*

Note: *This number varies based on the exec context throttling.

If RPC slot table maximum entries are higher on the client, fewer clients are needed to hit the maximum
value. If you have hundreds of clients in an environment that are all working at the same time to the same
nodes in the cluster (such as with EDA workloads), then you should consider setting the RPC slot tables
to much lower values based on the number of clients and the number of cluster nodes participating in the
workload.

Table 26) Total clients using 16 slot tables before node exec context exhaustion.
Node type Total available exec contexts Total clients sending max operations per
per node connection (128) per node
AFF8040 1,500 1,500/16 = ~93.7
A300 3,000 3,000/16 = ~187.5
A800 10,000 10,000/16 = ~625*

In addition, the following approaches can help improve overall performance for workloads with many
clients:
• Clusters with more nodes and data LIFs on each node.
• DNS round robin to spread network connections across more nodes on initial mount.
• FlexGroup volumes to leverage more hardware in the cluster.
• FlexCache volumes to spread read-heavy workloads across more nodes and mount points.
• Consider setting RPC slot table values lower on NFS clients to reduce the number of concurrent
operations; values are platform/ONTAP version-dependent and client count-dependent. For example,
see “Table 25.”
• Nconnect to increase the single client performance.
• ONTAP 9.9.1 or later when using platforms with 256GB RAM or greater for benefits of “Exec context
throttling” to help mitigate bully workload impact.
The slot table recommendations will adjust based on ONTAP hardware, ONTAP version, NFS mount
options, and so on. Testing different values in your environment is highly recommended. Does the RPC
slot table limit affect other NAS protocols?
RPC slot table limits affect only NFSv3 traffic:
• SMB clients use different connection methodologies for concurrency, such as SMB multichannel,
SMB multiplex, and SMB credits. The SMB connection methodology depends on client/server
configuration and protocol version. For example, SMB 1.0 uses SMB multiplex (mpx), whereas
SMB2.x uses SMB credits.
• NFSv4.x clients do not use RPC slot tables—instead, they use state IDs and session slots to control
the flow of concurrent traffic from clients.
Table 27 shows test run results from NFSv3 and NFSv4.1 using the same 65536 slot table values.

Table 27) Job comparisons - parallel dd – NFSv3 and NFSv4.1 with 65536 RPC slots.
Test Average read Average write Completion time
latency (ms) latency (ms)
NFSv3 – 1MB wsize/rsize; 65,536 slot tables 9.2 (+2.7ms) 42.3 (+5.5ms) 20m53s (+5m47s)

119 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
 Test Average read Average write Completion time
latency (ms) latency (ms)
NFSv4.1 – 1MB wsize/rsize; 65,536 slot tables 6.5 36.8 15m6s
NFSv3 – 256K wsize/rsize; 65,536 slot tables 1.3 (-.1ms) 3.9 (+.7ms) 19m12s (+7m2s)
NFSv4.1 – 256K wsize/rsize; 65,536 slot tables 1.4 3.2 12m10s
NFSv3 – 64K wsize/rsize; 65,536 slot tables .2 (+.1ms) 3.4 (+2.2ms) 17m2s (+1m54s)
NFSv4.1 – 64K wsize/rsize; 65,536 slot tables .1 1.2 15m8s

Virtual memory tuning

Another way to tune NFS clients to improve performance is to modify the virtual memory settings and the
dirty buffer values (vm.dirty). The virtual memory cache is important to how a client performs file
caching and modifying the default values can control how well reads or writes perform on a client. The
client writes file operations directly to RAM before flushing them to disk, which means there are fewer
back and forth conversations between the NFS client and server for workloads. For more information, see
https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt.
There are three triggers for file caches being flushed:
• Time-based. After a buffer reaches the age defined by this tunable, it must be marked for cleaning
(such as flushing, also known as writing to storage).
• Memory pressure. After the allocated memory has been filled, the file cache is flushed.
• Close. When a file handle is closed, all dirty buffers are asynchronously flushed to storage.
The default cache settings on clients provide a percentage of RAM dedicated for file caching that is
usually adequate for most workloads. The following are the default values on a CentOS/RHEL 8.3 client:
vm.dirty_background_bytes = 0 ## modifying this sets vm.dirty_background_ratio to 0
vm.dirty_background_ratio = 10 ## modifying this sets vm.dirty_background_bytes to 0
vm.dirty_bytes = 0 ## modifying this sets vm.dirty_ratio to 0
vm.dirty_ratio = 30 ## modifying this sets vm.dirty_bytes to 0
vm.dirty_expire_centisecs = 3000
vm.dirty_writeback_centisecs = 500
vm.dirtytime_expire_seconds = 43200

The following describes the attribute for the values we will focus on in this section. These values can be
set without needing to remount or reboot the client to have them take effect.

vm.dirty_ratio | vm.dirty_ bytes

These tunables define amount of RAM made available for data modified but not yet written to stable
storage. Whichever tunable is set, automatically sets the other tunable zero; Red Hat advises against
manually setting either of the two tunables to zero. Setting the vm.dirty_bytes to a static value can
provide more consistent performance across clients regardless of the amount of RAM present, but that
also can artificially limit performance on systems with large amounts of available RAM for workloads.

vm.dirty_background_ratio | vm.dirty_background_bytes
These tunables define the starting point at which the Linux writeback mechanism begins flushing dirty
blocks to stable storage.

vm.dirty_expire_centisecs
This tunable defines how old a dirty buffer can be before it must be tagged for asynchronously writing out.
Some workloads might not close file handles immediately after writing data. Without a file close, there is
no flush until either memory pressure or 30 seconds passes (by default). Waiting for these values can

120 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
prove suboptimal for application performance, so reducing the wait time can help performance in some
use cases.

vm.dirty_writeback_centisecs
The kernel flusher thread is responsible for asynchronously flushing dirty buffers between each flush
thread sleep. This tunable defines the amount of time spent sleeping between buffer flushes. Lowering
this value in conjunction with vm.dirty_expire_centisecs can also improve performance for some
workloads.

Other impacts of untuned filesystem caches

Because the default virtual memory tunables in modern systems might not do justice to the amount of
available RAM, writeback can potentially slow down other storage operations that have file system
caches that have not been tuned to use more available virtual memory.
Some of these potential impacts include:
• Slow or hung directory listings (ls)
• Read throughput significantly lower than write throughput
• High latency (seconds or higher) from nfsiostat
These issues would only be seen from the client performing the mixed read/write workloads and would be
seen across all mounted NFS volumes from the storage endpoint on that client during the impact period.

What workloads benefit the most from virtual memory tuning?

Workload types can be highly variant and the type of workload in use and how files are written controls
how impactful virtual memory tuning will be.
In Table 28, one million files were created by using a Python script with the f.write function. The following
changes were made to the virtual memory settings between tests:
• vm.dirty_ratio changed from 30% to 40%
• vm.dirty_background_ratio from 10% to 20%
• vm.dirty_expire_centisecs from 3,000 to 300
• vm.dirty_writeback_centisecs from 500 to 100
The results were underwhelming because this type of operation closes the file much faster than the cache
can expire, so there is little for the client to cache. However, when the client is configured to keep more
file cache in memory, the total execs blocked by ONTAP are reduced, because the client isn’t sending
many requests to the storage as frequently.

Table 28) One million files using f.write – NFSv3, 65536 slots – VM dirty bytes defaults versus tuned.
Test Average completion time Average total execs Time delta
blocked in ONTAP
NFSv3 – no nconnect – ~69.1 seconds 214,770 -
default vm.dirty settings
NFSv3 – no nconnect – ~69.5 seconds 144,790 +.4 seconds
vm.dirty settings tuned
NFSv3 – nconnect=8 – ~71.8 seconds 0 -
default vm.dirty settings
NFSv3 – nconnect=8 – ~69.5 seconds 0 -2.3 seconds
vm.dirty settings tuned

121 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
When the file size was increased, the overall completion times drastically improved with the virtual
memory settings, while nconnect didn’t make a lot of difference because our bottleneck here was not due
to TCP session limitations.
In this test, dd was used to create 50 x 500MB (2 clients, 1 file per folder, 25 folders, 25 simultaneous
processes per client) files, with a 256K wsize/rsize mount value.

Table 29) 50x 500MB files using dd – NFSv3, 65536 slots – VM dirty bytes defaults versus tuned.
Test Average completion time Average total execs Time delta
blocked in ONTAP (vm.dirty defaults
vs. vm.dirty set)
NFSv3 – no nconnect – ~134.4 seconds 0 -
default vm.dirty settings
NFSv3 – no nconnect – ~112.3 seconds 0 -22.1 seconds
vm.dirty settings tuned
NFSv3 – nconnect=8 – ~132.8 seconds 0 -
default vm.dirty settings
NFSv3 – nconnect=8 – ~112.9 seconds 0 -19.9 seconds
vm.dirty settings tuned

As seen in the high file count/small files example, these settings do not make a drastic difference for
every workload, so it’s important to test different values until you find the correct combination.
After you find the right values, you can use /etc/sysctl.conf to retain the values on reboot.

NFSv4.x concurrency - session slots

NFSv3 can have performance limitations with TCP slot tables, but NFSv4.x has its own limits when
dealing with connection concurrency and TCP slot table settings on NFS clients do not apply to NFSv4.x
operations. Instead, NFSv4.x uses session slots for concurrency.
NFSv4.x session slots operate in a similar fashion, in that the number of requests sent by a client over a
single TCP connection are limited to a set value, as specified by this Advanced Privilege option:
[-v4.x-session-num-slots <integer>] - Number of Slots in the NFSv4.x Session slot tables
(privilege: advanced)
This optional parameter specifies the number of entries in the NFSv4.x session slot table. By
default, the number of slots is 180. The maximum value is 2000.

Note: The stated maximum is 2,000, but it is not recommended to exceed 1,024, because you might
experience NFSv4.x session hangs as per bug 1392470.
When an NFSv4.x session is set up, the client and server negotiate the maximum requests allowed for
the session, with the lower value (client and server settings) being applied. Most Linux clients default to
64 session slots. This value is tunable in Linux clients through the modprobe configuration.
$ echo options nfs max_session_slots=180 > /etc/modprobe.d/nfsclient.conf
$ reboot

You can see the current value for an NFSv4.x mount with the systool command (found in the sysfsutils
package):
# systool -v -m nfs | grep session
max_session_slots = "64"

After modifying the client option:

# systool -v -m nfs | grep session
max_session_slots = "180"

122 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Despite the value default of 180 for the NFS server, ONTAP still has a per-connection limit of 128 exec
contexts per CID, so it is still possible for an NFSv4.x client to overrun the available exec contexts on a
single TCP connection to ONTAP and enter a pause state while resources are freed to the system if the
value is set too high. If session slots are overrun, this also increaseS the execs_blocked_by_cid
counter mentioned in the “Identifying potential issues with RPC slot tables” section.
In most cases, the default 180 value does not encounter this issue, and setting the session slots to a
higher value can create conditions where you might run out of system resources. To get more
performance out of your clients, consider using the nconnect option for more parallel handling of these
operations rather than adjusting the session slot values.
Note: Be sure to use the latest patched release of ONTAP for NFSv4.x to avoid issues such as this:
High NFS Latency with multiple connections to node LIFs from common client TCP socket

Can increasing session slots increase overall performance?

In short, yes—increasing session slots for the client and server can increase overall performance,
because you’re providing more concurrency to the workload. However, the performance gains will vary
based on workload type, number of slots set, robustness of the clients, as well as how busy the storage
system is. It can also impact other workloads on the client, as available resources can be starved out by a
single workload. Testing different session slot values is important to ensure that the changes don’t
negatively impact your environment.
In Table 30, we measured the completion time, average IOPS, and throughput for a high file count
workload (one million x 4KB files) and a low count sequential write workload (32x 2GB files).
The following parameters were used:
• FlexGroup volume across two AFF A300 nodes
• Two CentOS 8.3 clients
• NFSv4.1 mounts (AUTH_SYS, 256K wsize, no pNFS, nconnect=8)
• Virtual memory tuning as per Virtual memory tuning

Table 30) NFSv4.x session slot performance comparison.

Test Completion time Average Average
(seconds) IOPS MBps
NFSv4.1 – 1 million x 4KB files (180 session slots) ~253.9 ~11688 ~15.2
NFSv4.1 – 1 million x 4KB files (256 session slots) ~240.6 ~12685 ~16.7
NFSv4.1 – 1 million x 4KB files (512 session slots) ~246.5 ~12342 ~16.1
NFSv4.1 – 1 million x 4KB files (1,024 session slots) ~245.5 ~12378 ~16.3
NFSv4.1 – 32 x 2GB files (180 session slots) ~148.3 ~902 ~224.5
NFSv4.1 – 32 x 2GB files (256 session slots) ~149.6 ~889 ~221.5
NFSv4.1 – 32 x 2GB files (512 session slots) ~148.5 ~891 ~222
NFSv4.1 – 32 x 2GB files (1024 session slots) ~148.8 ~898 ~223.7

Table 31) NFSv4.x session slot performance – Percent change versus 180 slots.
Test Completion time IOPS MBps
NFSv4.1 – 1 million x 4KB files (256 session slots) -5.2% +8.5% +9.8%
NFSv4.1 – 1 million x 4KB files (512 session slots) -2.9% +5.6% +5.9%
NFSv4.1 – 1 million x 4KB files (1,024 session slots) -3.3% +5.9% +7.2%
NFSv4.1 – 32 x 2GB files (256 session slots) +0.9% -1.4% -1.3%

123 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
 Test Completion time IOPS MBps
NFSv4.1 – 32 x 2GB files (512 session slots) +0.1% -1.2% -1.1%
NFSv4.1 – 32 x 2GB files (1,024 session slots) +0.3% -0.4% -0.4%

Observations
In the high metadata/high file count creation test, more session slots improved completion time, IOPS,
and throughput overall, but there seemed to be a sweet spot at 256 session slots against 1,024 session
slots.
In the sequential write workload, there was a slight performance degradation when using higher session
slots. This shows that increasing session slots can help, but not in all workload types.

NFSv4.x client IDs/NFS4ERR_CLID_INUSE

When NFSv4.x clients mount NFS exports in ONTAP, each client sends its host name as part of the RPC
packet in the NFS mount packet. The NFS server responds with a client ID to keep track of the NFSv4.x
session.
If another NFSv4.x client with the same host name (but a different IP address), then the NFS server
responds with an error:
50 11.856227 10.x.x.x 10.x.x.y NFS V4 Call (Reply In 51) EXCHANGE_ID
51 11.856407 10.x.x.y 10.x.x.x NFS V4 Reply (Call In 50) EXCHANGE_ID Status: NFS4ERR_CLID_INUSE

As per the NFSv4.1 RFC standard, this is a security mechanism:

https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5661#section-2.10.8.3.
2.10.8.3. Protection from Unauthorized State Changes

As described to this point in the specification, the state model of NFSv4.1 is vulnerable to an
attacker that sends a SEQUENCE operation with a forged session ID and with a slot ID that it
expects the legitimate client to use next. When the legitimate client uses the slot ID with the
same sequence number, the server returns the attacker's result from the reply cache, which
disrupts the legitimate client and thus denies service to it. Similarly, an attacker could send
a CREATE_SESSION with a forged client ID to create a new session associated with the client
ID. The attacker could send requests using the new session that change locking state, such as
LOCKU operations to release locks the legitimate client has acquired. Setting a security policy
on the file that requires RPCSEC_GSS credentials when manipulating the file's state is one
potential work around, but has the disadvantage of preventing a legitimate client from releasing
state when RPCSEC_GSS is required to do so, but a GSS context cannot be obtained (possibly
because the user has logged off the client).

The SP4_MACH_CRED state protection option uses a machine credential where the principal that
creates the client ID MUST also be the principal that performs client ID and session maintenance
operations. The security of the machine credential state protection approach depends entirely on
safe guarding the per-machine credential. Assuming a proper safeguard using the per-machine
credential for operations like CREATE_SESSION, BIND_CONN_TO_SESSION, DESTROY_SESSION, and
DESTROY_CLIENTID will prevent an attacker from associating a rogue connection with a session, or
associating a rogue session with a client ID.

From RFC-5661, this is what that error means: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5661#section-15.1.13.2.

15.1.13.2. NFS4ERR_CLID_INUSE (Error Code 10017)
While processing an EXCHANGE_ID operation, the server was presented with a co_ownerid field that
matches an existing client with valid leased state, but the principal sending the EXCHANGE_ID
operation differs from the principal that established the existing client. This indicates a
collision (most likely due to chance) between clients. The client should recover by changing the
co_ownerid and re-sending EXCHANGE_ID (but not with the same slot ID and sequence ID; one or both
MUST be different on the re-send).

124 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
In these instances, the NFSv4.x client should retry the mount with a new client ID. In some cases, use of
the NFS mount option -clientaddr might be needed. For more information, see RedHat Bugzilla
#1821903.

Workarounds
Although the clients are behaving as expected per the RFC standards, there are a few ways to work
around this issue.

Workaround #1: Different data LIF in the same SVM

The NFSv4.x client ID issue occurs when you attempt to mount clients with the same host name to the
same data LIF in the SVM. However, if you can create additional data LIFs and use those in the mounts,
this issue does not occur. In some cases, creating additional data LIFs is not possible, such as when
using managed cloud services like Azure NetApp Files or NetApp Cloud Volumes Service.

Workaround #2: Different NFSv4.x versions

Another way to work around the NFSv4.x client ID issue is if one client mounts a volume with a different
NFSv4.x version than the other client with the same host name. For example, if client1
(client.domain.com) mounts using NFSv4.1 and client2 (client.domain.com) mounts using NFSv4.2, then
this issue does not occur. The caveat is that the ONTAP version you are using must support the NFS
versions being attempted. ONTAP 9.8 and later supports NFSv4.2, but managed cloud services such as
Azure NetApp Files or NetApp Cloud Volumes Service do not currently support NFSv4.2.

Workaround #3: Change the client name used with NFSv4.x mounts
By default, NFSv4.x uses the client’s host name for the client ID value when mounting to the NFS server.
However, there are client-side NFS options you can leverage to change that default behavior and
override the client ID used for NFSv4.x mounts.
To do this, set the NFS option nfs4-unique-id on the client to a static value for all clients that will use the
same host names (see RedHat Bugzilla 1582186). If you add this value to the
/etc/modprobe.d/nfsclient.conf file, it retains across reboots.
You can see the setting on the client as:
# systool -v -m nfs | grep -i nfs4_unique
nfs4_unique_id = ""

To set it, run the following command:

echo options nfs nfs4_unique_id=[string] > /etc/modprobe.d/nfsclient.conf
reboot

For example:
# echo options nfs nfs4_unique_id=uniquenfs4-1 > /etc/modprobe.d/nfsclient.conf

# systool -v -m nfs | grep -i nfs4_unique

nfs4_unique_id = "uniquenfs4-1"

For more information about this option, see NFS Client.

This can be used for any ONTAP version because it is a client-side setting. This includes managed cloud
services such as Azure NetApp Files or NetApp Cloud Volumes Service.

125 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
NFS silly renames
With NFS, when a file is locked by a client, if the file is deleted, then NFS performs what is called a silly
rename, where the file is renamed to an .nfs* name. In these scenarios, if an application needs to
recursively delete directories, then these deletes will fail because the directory won’t technically be empty.
The NFSv4.1 RFC offers a new result flag called OPEN4_RESULT_PRESERVE_UNLINKED that addresses
silly renames:
The use of the OPEN4_RESULT_PRESERVE_UNLINKED result flag allows a client to avoid the common
implementation practice of renaming an open file to ".nfs<unique value>" after it removes the
file. After the server returns OPEN4_RESULT_PRESERVE_UNLINKED, if a client sends a REMOVE
operation that would reduce the file's link count to zero, the server SHOULD report a value of
zero for the numlinks attribute on the file.

This flag is currently unsupported in ONTAP’s NFSv4.1 implementation.

How ONTAP NFS handles atime updates

Access time (or atime) refers to the last time a file was accessed through an NFS client. This can be seen
through the stat command in Linux. In the following example, a stat of the file vmware-1.log on an
NFS mount from this client shows an access timestamp of January 9, 2021.
# stat vmware-1.log
File: ‘vmware-1.log’
Size: 281796 Blocks: 560 IO Block: 65536 regular file
Device: 27h/39d Inode: 791804619 Links: 1
Access: (0600/-rw-------) Uid: ( 0/ root) Gid: ( 0/ root)
Access: 2021-01-09 15:39:30.202594000 -0500
Modify: 2021-01-09 15:39:30.232596000 -0500
Change: 2021-01-14 15:40:29.946918292 -0500

A command such as cat should update the atime for that file, and it does.
Now the atime shows Jan 14, 2021.
# cat vmware-1.log
# stat vmware-1.log
File: ‘vmware-1.log’
Size: 281796 Blocks: 552 IO Block: 4096 regular file
Device: fd00h/64768d Inode: 442679 Links: 1
Access: (0600/-rw-------) Uid: ( 0/ root) Gid: ( 0/ root)
Access: 2021-01-14 15:41:11.603404196 -0500
Modify: 2021-01-09 15:39:30.232596000 -0500
Change: 2021-01-14 15:40:29.946918292 -0500

In some instances, Linux clients might not update the atime properly due to client-side caching. If atimes
are not updating properly on commands such as cat, try remounting the NFS mount or dropping the
caches for the client (such as by running echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches; this drops all
caches on the client). From the CentOS 7.8 man pages:
The Linux client handles atime updates more loosely, however. NFS clients maintain good
performance by caching data, but that means that application reads, which normally update atime,
are not reflected to the server where a file's atime is actually maintained.

ONTAP updates atime whenever the client notifies the storage system of the update. If the client doesn’t
notify ONTAP, then there’s no way for the atime to update. You can disable atime updates with the
advanced privilege volume level option -atime-update.
[-atime-update {true|false}] - Access Time Update Enabled (privilege: advanced)
This optionally specifies whether the access time on inodes is updated when a file is read. The
default setting is true.

126 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
NAS flow control
Data ONTAP also provides a NAS-level flow control. This flow control mechanism is separate from the
TCP flow control enabled on the NICs and switches of the data network. It is always on and implemented
at the NAS protocol stack to prevent rogue clients from overloading a node in the cluster and creating a
denial of service (DoS) scenario. This flow control affects all NAS traffic (CIFS and NFS).

How it works
If a client sends too many packets to a node, the flow control adjusts the window size to zero and tells the
client to wait on sending any new NAS packets until the other packets are processed. If the client
continues to send packets during this zero window, then the NAS protocol stack flow control mechanism
sends a TCP reset to that client.
Contact NetApp Technical Support if you suspect a performance problem related to NAS flow control.

Using FlexClone to quickly change all UIDs/GIDs in a volume

In high file count workloads, such as software development environments, occasionally, a set of files
might be owned by, and access is limited to, a specific user or group. If another developer needs access
to these files, the dataset will need to have the owner/permissions changed. If there are millions of files
and folders, that operation would take a long time. Additionally, we don’t want to break access for other
users in production, so we’d need a way to solve this issue quickly and without disruption.
NetApp FlexClone volumes provide a way to create an instant Snapshot-backed copy of a volume without
taking up space in ONTAP, but they also provide a way to quickly change file and folder ownership for
everything in that clone. If you want those changes to be permanent, split the clone to its own volume
(which would then use up capacity in ONTAP). When we ran the following command to clone a volume
with over one million files and folders and changed the UID and GID on all of them, the command took
approximately 10 seconds to complete:
cluster::*> vol clone create -vserver DEMO -flexclone clone -parent-vserver DEMO -parent-volume
flexvol -junction-path /clone -uid 1100 -gid 1101
[Job 12606] Job succeeded: Successful

Auxiliary GIDs – addressing the 16 GID limitation for NFS

NFS has a specific limitation for the maximum number of auxiliary GIDs (secondary groups) that can be
honored in a single NFS request. The maximum for AUTH_SYS/AUTH_UNIX is 16 and for AUTH_GSS
(Kerberos) it is 32. This is a known protocol limitation of NFS.
ONTAP provides the ability to increase the maximum number of auxiliary groups to 1,024 by avoiding
truncation of the group list in the NFS packet by prefetching the requesting user’s group from a name
service.
auth-sys-extended-groups
extended-groups-limit

How it works
The options to extend the group limitation work just the way that the manage-gids option for other NFS
servers works. Basically, rather than dumping the entire list of auxiliary GIDs a user belongs to, the option
does a lookup for the GID on the file or folder and returns that value instead.
From the man page for mountd:
-g or --manage-gids

Accept requests from the kernel to map user id numbers into lists of group id numbers for
use in access control. An NFS request will normally except when using Kerberos or other

127 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
cryptographic authentication) contains a user-id and a list of group-ids. Due to a
limitation in the NFS protocol, at most 16 groups ids can be listed. If you use the -g flag,
then the list of group ids received from the client will be replaced by a list of group ids
determined by an appropriate lookup on the server.

When an access request is made, only 16 GIDs are passed in the RPC portion of the packet (Figure 22).

Figure 22) RPC packet with 16 GIDs.

Any GID beyond the limit of 16 is dropped by the protocol. Extended GIDs can be used with external
name services, or locally on the cluster if the users and groups are configured properly. To make sure
that a local UNIX user is a member of multiple groups, use the unix-group adduser(s) command:
COMMANDS
adduser - Add a user to a local UNIX group

addusers - Add a list of users to a local UNIX group

Performance impact of extended GIDs

Extended groups have a minimal performance penalty, generally in the low single digit percentages.
Higher metadata NFS workloads would likely have more effect, particularly on the system’s caches.
Performance can also be affected by the speed and workload of the name service servers. Overloaded
name service servers are slower to respond, causing delays in prefetching the GID.
For more information regarding name services, see TR-4668: Name Service Best Practices.

Considerations for numeric ID authentication (NFSv3 and NFSv4.x)

NFSv3 using AUTH_SYS sends numeric ID information for users and groups to perform user
authentication to NFS mounts for permission resolution.
NFSv4.x with ONTAP has a feature that allows NFSv4.x mounts to leverage numeric ID strings instead of
name strings, which allows NFSv4.x operations without needing centralized name services, matching
names/numeric IDs on client/server, matching ID domains, etc. (-v4-numeric-ids).
Enabling the -auth-sys-extended-groups option causes numeric ID authentication to fail if the UNIX
user numeric ID can’t be translated into a valid UNIX user name in name services. This counteracts the -
v4-numeric-ids option because ONTAP needs to query the incoming numeric user ID to search for
any auxiliary groups for authentication. If the incoming numeric ID cannot be resolved to a valid UNIX
user or the client’s UNIX numeric UID is different than the numeric UID ONTAP knows about, then the

128 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
lookup fails with secd.authsys.lookup.failed in the event log and ONTAP responds to the client
with the AUTH_ERROR client must begin a new session, which appears as “Permission
denied.”
To use both options, use the following guidance:
• If you require users and groups that either cannot be queried from both NFS client and server or have
mismatched numeric IDs, you can leverage NFS Kerberos and NFSv4.x ACLs to provide proper
authentication with NFSv4.x, as clients will send name strings instead of numeric IDs.
• If you are using -auth-sys-extended-groups with AUTH_SYS and without NFSv4.x ACLs, any
user that requires access through NFS requires a valid UNIX user in the name service database
specified in ns-switch (can also be a local user).
For more information about the -v4-numeric-ids option, see “Bypassing the name string – Numeric
IDs.”

Using local files

Using the -auth-sys-extended-groups option allows support for >16 auxiliary groups and is best
applied with external name services, such as LDAP. However, if an external name service server is
unavailable, you can leverage local files to create UNIX users and groups for support with -auth-sys-
extended-groups. Simply create the users and groups you want to use and run the unix-group
adduser command to populate the auxiliary group list.
For more information on LDAP configuration, see TR-4835: How to Configure LDAP in ONTAP.

Considerations for Active Directory LDAP

By default, in Microsoft Active Directory LDAP servers, the MaxPageSize attribute is set to a default of
1,000. This means that groups beyond 1,000 are truncated in LDAP queries. To enable full support with
the 1,024 value for extended groups, the MaxPageSize attribute must be modified to reflect the 1,024
value. For information about how to change that value, see the following Microsoft TechNet article: How
to view and set LDAP policy in Active Directory by using Ntdsutil.exe
Contact Microsoft support for concerns with modifying this value and to review the TechNet library article
MaxPageSize is set too high.

High file count considerations

For more detailed information about high file count environments, see the corresponding section in TR-
4571: NetApp FlexGroup Volume Best Practices and Implementation Guide.

Volume style recommendation for high file count environments

High file count refers to a workload that creates and stores hundreds of thousands to upwards of billions
of files in a single namespace. Datasets such as these generate many metadata operations, which can
impact performance on a FlexVol volume. As a result, in high file count environments, a FlexGroup
volume is highly recommended. For more information about FlexGroup volumes, see TR-4571: NetApp
FlexGroup Volume Best Practices and Implementation Guide.

NFS on nontraditional operating systems

The following section covers NFS use on nontraditional NFS platforms, such as Windows and Apple
operating systems. Windows NFS support was first added to Data ONTAP 8.2.3 and 8.3.1.

129 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
NFS on Windows
To use NFS with Data ONTAP systems earlier than version 8.2.3 and 8.3.1 on Windows operating
systems, server administrators can install third-party tools, such as the Hummingbird/OpenText NFS
Client. Red Hat’s Cygwin emulates NFS but leverages the SMB protocol rather than NFS, which requires
a CIFS license. True Windows NFS is available natively only through Services for Network File System or
third-party applications such as Hummingbird/OpenText.

Native Windows NFS in Data ONTAP

In RFC 1813, the following section covers MS-DOS as a supported client for NFS:
nlm4_share

struct nlm4_share {
string caller_name<LM_MAXSTRLEN>;
netobj fh;
netobj oh;
fsh4_mode mode;
fsh4_access access;
};

This structure is used to support DOS file sharing. The

caller_name field identifies the host making the request.
The fh field identifies the file to be operated on. The oh
field is an opaque object that identifies the host or process
that is making the request. The mode and access fields
specify the file-sharing and access modes. The encoding of fh
is a byte count, followed by the file handle byte array. See
the description of nlm4_lock for more details.

The way that Windows uses NLM is with nonmonitored lock calls. The following nonmonitored lock calls
are required for Windows NFS support:

NLM_SHARE
NLM_UNSHARE
NLM_NM_LOCK

These lock calls were not supported in versions of clustered Data ONTAP earlier than 8.3.1 or in versions
of clustered Data ONTAP earlier than 8.2.3. Bug 296324 covers this point.
Note: PCNFS, WebNFS, and HCLNFS (legacy Hummingbird NFS client) are not supported with Data
ONTAP storage systems and there are no plans to include support for these clients.

Considerations for using Windows NFS in Data ONTAP

Keep the following considerations in mind when using Windows NFS with ONTAP:
• NSM is not supported in Windows NFS. Therefore, volume moves and storage failovers can cause
disruptions that might not be seen on NFS clients that do support NSM.
• If you are using Windows NFS on an SVM, the following options must be set to Disabled. An example
of one issue that can occur if EJUKEBOX is not disabled is bug 918755.
enable-ejukebox
v3-connection-drop

Note: These options are enabled by default. Disabling them does not harm NFS data, but might
cause some unexpected behavior, such as client crashes. If you want to prevent unexpected
issues, consider using a separate SVM for Windows NFS clients.
• Always mount Windows NFS by using the mount option mtype=hard.
• When using Windows NFS, the showmount option should be enabled. Otherwise, renames of files
and folders on Windows NFS clients might fail.

130 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
cluster::> nfs server modify -vserver SVM -showmount enabled
• Windows NFS clients are not able to properly see the used space and space available through the df
commands.
Example of mounting NFS in Windows:
C:\>mount -o mtype=hard \\x.x.x.e\unix Z:
Z: is now successfully connected to \\x.x.x.e\unix

The command completed successfully.

Enabling Windows NFS support

In ONTAP, there is a specific NFS server option that must be toggled to Enabled to allow Windows NFS
clients. This option is disabled by default. If reverting from a Data ONTAP version that supports Windows
NFS, this option must be disabled prior to attempting the revert.
cluster::> nfs server show -vserver nfs_svm -fields v3-ms-dos-client
vserver v3-ms-dos-client
------- ----------------
nfs_svm disabled

Windows NFS use cases

Windows NFS can be used to provide access to NetApp storage devices on Windows operating systems
in lieu of a CIFS license. Additional use cases include:
• Applications that run on Windows and require NFS connectivity and/or Linux-style commands and
functions (such as GETATTR, SETATTR, and so on)
• When a user wants to leverage the NFS protocol rather than CIFS
• Where a user wants to avoid multiprotocol connectivity
Although Windows can be used to leverage NFS connectivity, it might make more sense to use CIFS and
the newer features of the latest SMB version that Windows provides for performance and NDO
functionality. Additionally, using Windows NFS with ONTAP requires some considerations, covered later.

NFS using Apple OS

NFS mounts are also possible by using Apple OS using the Finder or terminal windows. For the complete
mount options in the Apple OS, use the man mount_nfs command in a terminal window. When using
Apple clients for NFS, there are some things to keep in mind.

Dynamic versus static UIDs

When using a Mac with Active Directory, the default behavior of the Mac is to dynamically create a
UID/GID based on the Windows SID of the user. In many cases, this is sufficient, but if control over the
UIDs and GIDs is needed (such as integration with an existing LDAP server), then static UIDs can be
leveraged. For information about best practices for using Apple OS with Active Directory, see the white
paper called Integrate Active Directory using Directory Utility on Mac.

Apple OS disables root by default

Apple disables the root user (UID 0) by default in its OS. Users are instead required to log in with a user
name other than root and use sudo if performing root-level tasks. It is possible to reenable the root user.

131 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Apple UIDs start at 501
The Apple UID structure starts at UID 501. This UID is not a default UNIX user in ONTAP, nor does it
exist in most name service servers. This situation is the same for every Apple OS client in an
environment, so it is possible that multiple users exist with the same UID. The options to handle this are
as follows:
• Create a user on the cluster or in a name service server with UID 501 to authenticate all Apple users.
• Change the UID on the Apple OS for each user who intends to use NFS on Apple.

Use of Apple NFS with NTFS security-style volumes

Apple NFS handles NTFS security-style volumes differently than Linux NFS clients. Therefore,
copies/writes to an NFS mount using Finder applications fail by default when NTFS security style is used.
This issue occurs when the Apple client attempts an EXCLUSIVE CREATE operation on the file, which is
only allowed by SMB clients in Data ONTAP.
As a workaround, the NFS server option –ntfs-unix-security-ops can be set to ignore to allow
NTFS security–style volumes to work properly with NFS mounts on Apple. For more information, see bug
723115.

NFS rootonly operations do not work as expected with Apple OS

In the section called “The rootonly options – nfsrootonly and mountrootonly,” rootonly operations are
described. By default, -mount-rootonly is enabled, and -nfs-rootonly is disabled. Apple OS
behavior, when mounting using NFS defaults, is to always use reserved ports for the MOUNT protocol
and nonreserved ports for the NFS protocol. The Linux NFS mount option of resvport/noresvport applies
in the Apple OS, but noresvport does not control the client’s MOUNT port sent to the cluster. Therefore,
Apple NFS clients always use ports in range <1024 for MOUNT.
At present, there is not a known method to change this behavior, so Apple technical support would need
to be engaged to use nonreserved ports for NFS MOUNT calls. For NFSv4.x mounts, this does not
matter, because NFSv4.x does not leverage the MOUNT protocol. NFS client ports for NFS operations
(port 2049) can be controlled using the resvport/noresvport mount options, but the NFS server option on
the cluster would need to be toggled to honor the client behavior. Doing so would affect all versions of
NFS.
Additionally, when attempting to mount with the resvport option specified in the Apple OS, the sudo
command would need to be used, because root is disabled and the -users option is not specified by
default.
Note: When using the Finder to mount NFS, mount options cannot be specified.

Appendix A
The following section contains command examples, configuration output, and other information that would
have cluttered the main sections of this document.

Examples
The following section shows examples of commands and of NFS feature functionality.

Examples of controlling the root user

In some cases, storage administrators might want to control how the root user is handled from specific
clients. These examples show how the approaches work.

132 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Squashing root
The following examples show how to squash root to anon in various configuration scenarios.

Example 1: Root is squashed to the anon user for all clients.

This approach uses superuser for all NFS clients using sec=sys; other sec types are denied access.
cluster::> vserver export-policy rule show –policyname root_squash -instance
(vserver export-policy rule show)

Vserver: vs0
Policy Name: root_squash
Rule Index: 1
Access Protocol: nfs  only NFS is allowed (NFSv3 and v4)
Client Match Hostname, IP Address, Netgroup, or Domain: 0.0.0.0/0  all clients
RO Access Rule: sys  only AUTH_SYS is allowed
RW Access Rule: sys  only AUTH_SYS is allowed
User ID To Which Anonymous Users Are Mapped: 65534  mapped to 65534
Superuser Security Types: none  superuser (root) squashed to anon user
Honor SetUID Bits in SETATTR: true
Allow Creation of Devices: true

cluster::> volume show -vserver vs0 -volume nfsvol -fields policy

vserver volume policy
------- ------ -----------
vs0 nfsvol root_squash

[root@nfsclient /]# mount -o nfsvers=3 cluster:/nfsvol /mnt

[root@nfsclient /]# cd /mnt

[root@nfsclient mnt]# touch root_squash

[root@nfsclient mnt]# ls -la

total 116
drwxrwxrwx. 3 root root 106496 Apr 24 2013 .
dr-xr-xr-x. 26 root root 4096 Apr 24 11:24 ..
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root daemon 4096 Apr 18 12:54 junction
-rw-r--r--. 1 nobody nobody 0 Apr 24 11:33 root_squash

[root@nfsclient mnt]# ls -lan

drwxrwxrwx. 3 0 0 106496 Apr 24 2013 .
dr-xr-xr-x. 26 0 0 4096 Apr 24 11:24 ..
drwxrwxrwx. 12 0 0 4096 Apr 24 11:05 .snapshot
drwxr-xr-x. 2 0 1 4096 Apr 18 12:54 junction
-rw-r--r--. 1 65534 65534 0 Apr 24 2013 root_squash

[root@nfsclient /]# mount -o sec=krb5 cluster:/nfsvol /mnt

mount.nfs: access denied by server while mounting cluster:/nfsvol

Example 2: Root is squashed to the anon user using superuser for a specific client.
In this example, sec=sys and sec=none are allowed.
cluster::> vserver export-policy rule show –policyname root_squash_client -instance
(vserver export-policy rule show)

Vserver: vs0
Policy Name: root_squash_client
Rule Index: 1
Access Protocol: nfs  only NFS is allowed (NFSv3 and v4)
Client Match Hostname, IP Address, Netgroup, or Domain: x.x.x.x  just this client
RO Access Rule: sys,none  AUTH_SYS and AUTH_NONE are allowed
RW Access Rule: sys,none  AUTH_SYS and AUTH_NONE are allowed
User ID To Which Anonymous Users Are Mapped: 65534  mapped to 65534
Superuser Security Types: none  superuser (root) squashed to anon user
Honor SetUID Bits in SETATTR: true
Allow Creation of Devices: true

133 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
cluster::> volume show -vserver vs0 -volume nfsvol -fields policy
vserver volume policy
------- ------ -----------
vs0 nfsvol root_squash_client

[root@nfsclient /]# mount -o nfsvers=3 cluster:/nfsvol /mnt

[root@nfsclient /]# cd /mnt

[root@nfsclient mnt]# touch root_squash_client

[root@nfsclient mnt]# ls -la

drwxrwxrwx. 3 root root 106496 Apr 24 2013 .
dr-xr-xr-x. 26 root root 4096 Apr 24 11:24 ..
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root daemon 4096 Apr 18 12:54 junction
-rw-r--r--. 1 nfsnobody nfsnobody 0 Apr 24 2013 root_squash_client

[root@nfsclient mnt]# ls -lan

drwxrwxrwx. 3 0 0 106496 Apr 24 2013 .
dr-xr-xr-x. 26 0 0 4096 Apr 24 11:24 ..
drwxrwxrwx. 12 0 0 4096 Apr 24 11:05 .snapshot
drwxr-xr-x. 2 0 1 4096 Apr 18 12:54 junction
-rw-r--r--. 1 65534 65534 0 Apr 24 2013 root_squash_client

Example 3: Root is squashed to the anon user using superuser for a specific set of clients.
This approach uses sec=krb5 (Kerberos) and only NFSv4 and CIFS are allowed.
cluster::> vserver export-policy rule show –policyname root_squash_krb5 -instance
(vserver export-policy rule show)

Vserver: vs0
Policy Name: root_squash_krb5
Rule Index: 1
Access Protocol: nfs4,cifs  only NFSv4 and CIFS are allowed
Client Match Hostname, IP Address, Netgroup, or Domain: x.x.x.0/24  just clients with an IP
address of 10.10.100.X
RO Access Rule: krb5  only AUTH_RPCGSSD is allowed
RW Access Rule: krb5  only AUTH_RPCGSSD is allowed
User ID To Which Anonymous Users Are Mapped: 65534  mapped to 65534
Superuser Security Types: none  superuser (root) squashed to anon user
Honor SetUID Bits in SETATTR: true
Allow Creation of Devices: true

cluster::> volume show -vserver vs0 -volume nfsvol -fields policy

vserver volume policy
------- ------ -----------
vs0 nfsvol root_squash

[root@nfsclient /]# mount -o nfsvers=3 cluster:/nfsvol /mnt

mount.nfs: access denied by server while mounting cluster:/nfsvol

[root@nfsclient /]# mount -t nfs4 cluster:/nfsvol /mnt

mount.nfs4: Operation not permitted

[root@nfsclient /]# mount -t nfs4 -o sec=krb5 krbsn:/nfsvol /mnt

[root@nfsclient /]# cd /mnt

[root@nfsclient mnt]# touch root_squash_krb5

[root@nfsclient mnt]# ls -la

drwxrwxrwx. 3 root root 106496 Apr 24 2013 .
dr-xr-xr-x. 26 root root 4096 Apr 24 11:24 ..
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root daemon 4096 Apr 18 12:54 junction
-rw-r--r--. 1 nobody nobody 0 Apr 24 11:50 root_squash_krb5

[root@nfsclient mnt]# ls -lan

drwxrwxrwx. 3 0 0 106496 Apr 24 2013 .
dr-xr-xr-x. 26 0 0 4096 Apr 24 11:24 ..
drwxr-xr-x. 2 0 1 4096 Apr 18 12:54 junction

134 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
-rw-r--r--. 1 99 99 0 Apr 24 11:50 root_squash_krb5

Note: The UID of 99 in this example occurs in NFSv4 when the user name cannot map into the NFSv4
domain. A look at /var/log/messages confirms this:
Apr 23 10:54:23 nfsclient nfsidmap[1810]: nss_getpwnam: name 'pcuser' not found in domain
nfsv4domain.netapp.com'

In the preceding examples, when the root user requests access to a mount, it maps to the anon UID. In
this case, the UID is 65534. This mapping prevents unwanted root access from specified clients to the
NFS share. Because “sys” is specified as the rw and ro access rules in the first two examples, only clients
using sec=sys gain access. The third example shows a possible configuration using Kerberized NFS
authentication. Setting the access protocol to NFS allows only NFS access to the share (including NFSv3
and NFSv4). If multiprotocol access is desired, then the access protocol must be set to allow NFS and
CIFS. NFS access can be limited to only NFSv3 or NFSv4 here as well.

Root is root (no_root_squash)

The following examples show how to enable the root user to come into an NFS share as the root user.
This is also known as “no_root_squash.”

Example 1: Root is allowed access as root using superuser for all clients only for sec=sys.
In this example, sec=none and sec=sys are allowed rw and ro access; all other anon access is mapped to
65534.
cluster::> vserver export-policy rule show –policyname root_allow_anon_squash -instance
(vserver export-policy rule show)

Vserver: vs0
Policy Name: root_allow_anon_squash
Rule Index: 1
Access Protocol: nfs  only NFS is allowed (NFSv3 and v4)
Client Match Hostname, IP Address, Netgroup, or Domain: 0.0.0.0/0  all clients
RO Access Rule: sys,none  AUTH_SYS and AUTH_NONE allowed
RW Access Rule: sys,none  AUTH_SYS and AUTH_NONE allowed
User ID To Which Anonymous Users Are Mapped: 65534  mapped to 65534
Superuser Security Types: sys  superuser for AUTH_SYS only
Honor SetUID Bits in SETATTR: true

cluster::> volume show -vserver vs0 -volume nfsvol -fields policy

vserver volume policy
------- ------ -----------
vs0 nfsvol root_allow_anon_squash

[root@nfsclient /]# mount -o nfsvers=3 cluster:/nfsvol /mnt

[root@nfsclient /]# cd /mnt

[root@nfsclient mnt]# touch root_allow_anon_squash_nfsv3

[root@nfsclient mnt]# ls -la

drwxrwxrwx. 3 root root 106496 Apr 24 2013 .
dr-xr-xr-x. 26 root root 4096 Apr 24 11:24 ..
drwxrwxrwx. 12 root root 4096 Apr 24 11:05 .snapshot
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root bin 4096 Apr 18 12:54 junction
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 0 Apr 24 2013 root_allow_anon_squash_nfsv3

[root@nfsclient mnt]# ls -lan

drwxrwxrwx. 3 0 0 106496 Apr 24 2013 .
dr-xr-xr-x. 26 0 0 4096 Apr 24 11:24 ..
drwxr-xr-x. 2 0 1 4096 Apr 18 12:54 junction
-rw-r--r--. 1 0 0 0 Apr 24 11:56 root_allow_anon_squash_nfsv3

Example 2: Root is allowed access as root using superuser for sec=krb5 only.

135 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
In this example, anon access is mapped to 65534; sec=sys and sec=krb5 are allowed, but only using
NFSv4.
cluster::> vserver export-policy rule show –policyname root_allow_krb5_only -instance
(vserver export-policy rule show)

Vserver: vs0
Policy Name: root_allow_krb5_only
Rule Index: 1
Access Protocol: nfs4  only NFSv4 is allowed
Client Match Hostname, IP Address, Netgroup, or Domain: 0.0.0.0/0  all clients
RO Access Rule: sys,krb5  AUTH_SYS and AUTH_RPCGSS allowed
RW Access Rule: sys,krb5  AUTH_SYS and AUTH_RPCGSS allowed
User ID To Which Anonymous Users Are Mapped: 65534  mapped to 65534
Superuser Security Types: krb5  superuser via AUTH_RPCGSS only
Honor SetUID Bits in SETATTR: true

cluster::> volume show -vserver vs0 -volume nfsvol -fields policy

vserver volume policy
------- ------ -----------
vs0 nfsvol root_allow_krb5_only

[root@nfsclient /]# mount -o nfsvers=3 cluster:/nfsvol /mnt

mount.nfs: access denied by server while mounting cluster:/nfsvol

[root@nfsclient /]# mount -t nfs4 cluster:/nfsvol /mnt

[root@nfsclient /]# cd /mnt

[root@nfsclient mnt]# touch root_allow_krb5_only_notkrb5

[root@nfsclient mnt]# ls -la

drwxrwxrwx. 3 root root 106496 Apr 24 2013 .
dr-xr-xr-x. 26 root root 4096 Apr 24 11:24 ..
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root daemon 4096 Apr 18 12:54 junction
-rw-r--r--. 1 nobody nobody 0 Apr 24 2013 root_allow_krb5_only_notkrb5

[root@nfsclient mnt]# ls -lan

drwxrwxrwx. 3 0 0 106496 Apr 24 2013 .
dr-xr-xr-x. 26 0 0 4096 Apr 24 11:24 ..
drwxr-xr-x. 2 0 1 4096 Apr 18 12:54 junction
-rw-r--r--. 1 99 99 0 Apr 24 2013 root_allow_krb5_only_notkrb5

NOTE: Again, the UID of an unmapped user in NFSv4 is 99. This is controlled via /etc/idmapd.conf
in Linux and /etc/default/nfs in Solaris.

[root@nfsclient /]# mount -t nfs4 -o sec=krb5 cluster:/nfsvol /mnt

[root@nfsclient /]# kinit
Password for [email protected]:
[root@nfsclient /]# cd /mnt

[root@nfsclient mnt]# touch root_allow_krb5_only_krb5mount

[root@nfsclient mnt]# ls -la

drwxrwxrwx. 3 root root 106496 Apr 24 2013 .
dr-xr-xr-x. 26 root root 4096 Apr 24 11:24 ..
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root daemon 4096 Apr 18 12:54 junction
-rw-r--r--. 1 root daemon 0 Apr 24 2013 root_allow_krb5_only_krb5mount

[root@nfsclient mnt]# ls -lan

drwxrwxrwx. 3 0 0 106496 Apr 24 2013 .
dr-xr-xr-x. 26 0 0 4096 Apr 24 11:24 ..
drwxr-xr-x. 2 0 1 4096 Apr 18 12:54 junction
-rw-r--r--. 1 0 1 0 Apr 24 2013 root_allow_krb5_only_krb5mount

Example 3: Root and all anonymous users are allowed access as root using anon=0.
This example allows only for sec=sys and sec=krb5 over NFSv4.
cluster::> vserver export-policy rule show –policyname root_allow_anon0 -instance

136 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
 (vserver export-policy rule show)

Vserver: vs0
Policy Name: root_allow_anon0
Rule Index: 1
Access Protocol: nfs4  only NFSv4 is allowed
Client Match Hostname, IP Address, Netgroup, or Domain: 0.0.0.0/0  all clients
RO Access Rule: krb5, sys  AUTH_SYS and AUTH_RPCGSS allowed
RW Access Rule: krb5, sys  AUTH_SYS and AUTH_RPCGSS allowed
User ID To Which Anonymous Users Are Mapped: 0  mapped to 0
Superuser Security Types: none  superuser (root) squashed to anon user
Honor SetUID Bits in SETATTR: true
Allow Creation of Devices: true

cluster::> volume show -vserver vs0 -volume nfsvol -fields policy

vserver volume policy
------- ------ -----------
vs0 nfsvol root_allow_anon0

[root@nfsclient /]# mount -o nfsvers=3 cluster:/nfsvol /mnt

mount.nfs: access denied by server while mounting cluster:/nfsvol

[root@nfsclient /]# mount -t nfs4 cluster:/nfsvol /mnt

[root@nfsclient /]# cd /mnt

[root@nfsclient mnt]# touch root_allow_anon0

[root@nfsclient mnt]# ls -la

drwxrwxrwx. 3 root root 106496 Apr 24 2013 .
dr-xr-xr-x. 26 root root 4096 Apr 24 11:24 ..
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root daemon 4096 Apr 18 12:54 junction
-rw-r--r--. 1 root daemon 0 Apr 24 2013 root_allow_anon0

[root@nfsclient mnt]# ls -lan

drwxrwxrwx. 3 0 0 106496 Apr 24 2013 .
dr-xr-xr-x. 26 0 0 4096 Apr 24 11:24 ..
drwxr-xr-x. 2 0 1 4096 Apr 18 12:54 junction
-rw-r--r--. 1 0 1 0 Apr 24 2013 root_allow_anon0

[root@nfsclient /]# mount -t nfs4 -o sec=krb5 cluster:/nfsvol /mnt

[root@nfsclient /]# cd /mnt

[root@nfsclient mnt]# touch root_allow_anon0_krb5

[root@nfsclient mnt]# ls -la

drwxrwxrwx. 3 root root 106496 Apr 24 2013 .
dr-xr-xr-x. 26 root root 4096 Apr 24 11:24 ..
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root daemon 4096 Apr 18 12:54 junction
-rw-r--r--. 1 root daemon 0 Apr 24 2013 root_allow_anon0_krb5

[root@nfsclient mnt]# ls -lan

drwxrwxrwx. 3 0 0 106496 Apr 24 2013 .
dr-xr-xr-x. 26 0 0 4096 Apr 24 11:24 ..
drwxr-xr-x. 2 0 1 4096 Apr 18 12:54 junction
-rw-r--r--. 1 0 1 0 Apr 24 2013 root_allow_anon0_krb5

Example of creating load sharing mirrors for vsroot

This example shows how to create load-sharing mirrors for the vsroot volume. Use of load-sharing mirrors
applies to NFSv3 and SMB only.
cluster::*> vol show -vserver NFS -vsroot true -fields size
vserver volume size
------- ------ ----
NFS vsroot 1GB

137 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
cluster::*> vol create -vserver NFS -volume vsroot_mirror1 -aggregate aggr1_node1 -size 1g -type
DP
[Job 26705] Job succeeded: Successful

cluster::*> vol create -vserver NFS -volume vsroot_mirror2 -aggregate aggr1_node2 -size 1g -type
DP
[Job 26707] Job succeeded: Successful

cluster::*> snapmirror create -source-path NFS:vsroot -destination-path NFS:vsroot_mirror1 -

vserver NFS -type LS -schedule daily
[Job 26709] Job succeeded: SnapMirror: done

cluster::*> snapmirror create -source-path NFS:vsroot -destination-path NFS:vsroot_mirror2 -

vserver NFS -type LS -schedule daily
[Job 26711] Job succeeded: SnapMirror: done

cluster::*> snapmirror show -source-path NFS:vsroot -fields schedule,state

source-path destination-path schedule state
---------------------------- ------------------------------------ -------- ------------
cluster://NFS/vsroot cluster://NFS/vsroot_mirror1 daily - -
cluster://NFS/vsroot cluster://NFS/vsroot_mirror2 daily - -
2 entries were displayed.

cluster::*> snapmirror initialize-ls-set -source-path NFS:vsroot

[Job 26714] Job is queued: snapmirror initialize-ls-set for source " cluster://NFS/vsroot".

cluster::*> snapmirror show -source-path NFS:vsroot -fields schedule,state

source-path destination-path schedule state
---------------------------- ------------------------------------ -------- ------------
cluster://NFS/vsroot cluster://NFS/vsroot_mirror1 daily Snapmirrored
cluster://NFS/vsroot cluster://NFS/vsroot_mirror2 daily Snapmirrored
2 entries were displayed.

Export policy rule inheritance example

In the following example, the SVM root volume has limited superuser access only to the client x.x.x.x.
When the root user attempts to access a mount from a client other than x.x.x.x, it squashes to the
anon user, which is 65534:
cluster::> vol show -vserver nfs_svm -volume rootvol -fields policy
(volume show)
vserver volume policy
------- ------- -------
nfs_svm rootvol default

cluster::> export-policy rule show -vserver nfs_svm -policyname default -instance

(vserver export-policy rule show)

Vserver: nfs_svm
Policy Name: default
Rule Index: 1
Access Protocol: any
Client Match Hostname, IP Address, Netgroup, or Domain: x.x.x.x
RO Access Rule: any
RW Access Rule: any
User ID To Which Anonymous Users Are Mapped: 65534
Superuser Security Types: any
Honor SetUID Bits in SETATTR: true
Allow Creation of Devices: true

Vserver: nfs_svm
Policy Name: default
Rule Index: 2
Access Protocol: any
Client Match Hostname, IP Address, Netgroup, or Domain: 0.0.0.0/0
RO Access Rule: any
RW Access Rule: any
User ID To Which Anonymous Users Are Mapped: 65534
Superuser Security Types: none

138 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
 Honor SetUID Bits in SETATTR: true
Allow Creation of Devices: true
2 entries were displayed.

As per the example in the section “Limiting Access to the SVM Root Volume,” root would not be able to
list the contents of the SVM root based on the volume permissions (711) and the existing export policy
rules on any hosts other than x.x.x.x.
# ifconfig | grep "inet addr"
inet addr:x.x.x.y Bcast:x.x.225.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
# id
uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root) context=unconfined_u:unconfined_r:unconfined_t:s0-
s0:c0.c1023
# mount | grep mnt
x.x.x.e:/ on /mnt type nfs (rw,nfsvers=3,addr=x.x.x.e)
# cd /mnt
# ls
ls: cannot open directory .: Permission denied

If the data volumes in the SVM also are set to this export policy, they use the same rules, and only the
client set to have root access is able to log in as root.
If root access is desired to the data volumes, then a new export policy can be created and root access
can be specified for all hosts or a subset of hosts through subnet, netgroup, or multiple rules with
individual client IP addresses or host names.
The same concept applies to the other export policy rule attributes, such as RW.
For example, if the default export policy rule is changed to disallow write access to all clients except
x.x.x.x and to allow superuser, then even root is disallowed write access to volumes with that export
policy applied:
cluster::> export-policy rule modify -vserver nfs_svm -policyname default -ruleindex 2 -rwrule
never -superuser any

cluster::> export-policy rule show -vserver nfs_svm -policyname default -instance

(vserver export-policy rule show)

Vserver: nfs_svm
Policy Name: default
Rule Index: 1
Access Protocol: any
Client Match Hostname, IP Address, Netgroup, or Domain: x.x.x.x
RO Access Rule: any
RW Access Rule: any
User ID To Which Anonymous Users Are Mapped: 65534
Superuser Security Types: any
Honor SetUID Bits in SETATTR: true
Allow Creation of Devices: true

Vserver: nfs_svm
Policy Name: default
Rule Index: 2
Access Protocol: any
Client Match Hostname, IP Address, Netgroup, or Domain: 0.0.0.0/0
RO Access Rule: any
RW Access Rule: never
User ID To Which Anonymous Users Are Mapped: 65534
Superuser Security Types: any
Honor SetUID Bits in SETATTR: true
Allow Creation of Devices: true
2 entries were displayed.

# ifconfig | grep "inet addr"

inet addr:x.x.x.y Bcast:x.x.225.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
# id

139 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root) context=unconfined_u:unconfined_r:unconfined_t:s0-
s0:c0.c1023
# mount | grep mnt
x.x.x.e:/ on /mnt type nfs (rw,nfsvers=3,addr=x.x.x.e)
# cd /mnt
# touch rootfile
touch: cannot touch `rootfile': Read-only file system

When a new policy and rule are created and applied to the data volume, the same user is allowed to write
to the data volume mounted below the SVM root volume. This is the case despite the export policy rule at
the SVM root volume disallowing write access.
Example:
cluster::> export-policy create -vserver nfs_svm -policyname volume
cluster::> export-policy rule create -vserver nfs_svm -policyname volume -clientmatch 0.0.0.0/0 -
rorule any -rwrule any -allow-suid true -allow-dev true -ntfs-unix-security-ops fail -chown-mode
restricted -superuser any -protocol any -ruleindex 1 -anon 65534

cluster::> export-policy rule show -vserver nfs_svm -policyname volume -instance

(vserver export-policy rule show)

Vserver: nfs_svm
Policy Name: volume
Rule Index: 1
Access Protocol: any
Client Match Hostname, IP Address, Netgroup, or Domain: 0.0.0.0/0
RO Access Rule: any
RW Access Rule: any
User ID To Which Anonymous Users Are Mapped: 65534
Superuser Security Types: any
Honor SetUID Bits in SETATTR: true
Allow Creation of Devices: true

::> volume modify -vserver flexvol -volume unix -policy volume

From the client:

# ifconfig | grep "inet addr"
inet addr:x.x.x.y Bcast:x.x.225.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
# id
uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root) context=unconfined_u:unconfined_r:unconfined_t:s0-
s0:c0.c1023
# cd /mnt/unix
[root@linux-client unix]# ls
file
[root@linux-client unix]# touch rootfile
[root@linux-client unix]# ls -la | grep rootfile
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 0 Apr 1 2014 rootfile
# cd ..
# ls
nfs4 ntfs unix
# touch rootdir
touch: cannot touch `rootdir': Read-only file system

However, the read-only attribute for the export policy rules needs to allow read access from the parent to
allow mounts to occur. Setting rorule to never or not setting an export policy rule in the parent
volume’s export policy (empty policy) disallows mounts to volumes underneath that parent.
In the following example, the vsroot volume has an export policy that has rorule and rwrule set to
never, while the data volume has an export policy with a rule that is wide open:
cluster::> export-policy rule show -vserver nfs -policyname wideopen -instance
(vserver export-policy rule show)

Vserver: nfs
Policy Name: wideopen

140 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
 Rule Index: 1
Access Protocol: any
Client Match Hostname, IP Address, Netgroup, or Domain: 0.0.0.0/0
RO Access Rule: any
RW Access Rule: any
User ID To Which Anonymous Users Are Mapped: 0
Superuser Security Types: any
Honor SetUID Bits in SETATTR: true
Allow Creation of Devices: true

cluster::> export-policy rule show -vserver nfs -policyname deny -instance

(vserver export-policy rule show)

Vserver: nfs
Policy Name: deny
Rule Index: 1
Access Protocol: any
Client Match Hostname, IP Address, Netgroup, or Domain: 0.0.0.0/0
RO Access Rule: never
RW Access Rule: never
User ID To Which Anonymous Users Are Mapped: 65534
Superuser Security Types: sys
Honor SetUID Bits in SETATTR: true
Allow Creation of Devices: true

cluster::> volume show -vserver nfs -volume rootvol -fields policy,unix-permissions

vserver volume policy unix-permissions
------- ------- ------ ----------------
nfs rootvol deny ---rwx--x—x

cluster::> volume show -vserver nfs -volume unix -fields policy,unix-permissions

vserver volume policy unix-permissions
------- ------ -------- ----------------
nfs unix wideopen ---rwxrwxrwx

When a mount of the volume UNIX is attempted, access is denied.

# mount -o nfsvers=3 x.x.x.e:/unix /cdot
mount.nfs: access denied by server while mounting x.x.x.e:/unix

When the deny policy is changed to allow read-only access, mounting is allowed.
cluster::> export-policy rule modify -vserver nfs -policyname deny -rorule any -ruleindex 1

# mount -o nfsvers=3 x.x.x.e:/unix /cdot

# mount | grep unix
x.x.x.e:/unix on /cdot type nfs (rw,nfsvers=3,addr=x.x.x.e)

As a result, storage administrators can have complete and granular control over what users see and
access file systems using export policies, rules, and volume permissions.

Export policy rule index example

In the following example, a client with the IP address of x.x.x.x (host name of centos64) has been
denied access to read a volume while all other clients are allowed access. However, the client rule is
below the All Access rule, so mount and read are allowed.
Example:
cluster::> export-policy rule show -vserver NAS -policyname allow_all
Policy Rule Access Client RO
Vserver Name Index Protocol Match Rule
------------ --------------- ------ -------- --------------------- ---------
NAS allow_all 1 any 0.0.0.0/0 any
NAS allow_all 99 any x.x.x.x never
2 entries were displayed.

cluster::> vol show -vserver NAS -volume unix -fields policy

141 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
vserver volume policy
------- ------ ---------
NAS unix allow_all

[root@centos64 ~]# mount -o nfsvers=3 x.x.x.a:/vol/nfs /7mode

[root@centos64 ~]# mount x.x.x.a:/unix /mnt
[root@centos64 ~]# cd /mnt
[root@centos64 mnt]# ls -la
total 12
drwxrwxrwx. 3 root root 4096 Dec 10 14:49 .
dr-xr-xr-x. 46 root root 4096 Dec 10 14:57 ..
drwxrwx---. 2 root root 4096 Dec 10 15:00 file

If those rules are flipped, the client is denied access despite the rule allowing access to everyone being in
the policy. Rule index numbers can be modified with the export-policy rule setindex command.
In the following example, rule #1 was changed to rule #99. Rule #99 gets moved to #98 by default.
cluster::> export-policy rule setindex -vserver NAS -policyname allow_all -ruleindex 1 -
newruleindex 99

cluster::> export-policy rule show -vserver NAS -policyname allow_all

Policy Rule Access Client RO
Vserver Name Index Protocol Match Rule
------------ --------------- ------ -------- --------------------- ---------
NAS allow_all 98 any x.x.x.x never
NAS allow_all 99 any 0.0.0.0/0 any
2 entries were displayed.

cluster::> export-policy cache flush -vserver NAS -cache all

Warning: You are about to flush the "all (but showmount)" cache for Vserver "NAS" on node
"node2", which will result in increased traffic to the name servers. Do you want to proceed with
flushing the cache? {y|n}: y

[root@centos64 /]# mount x.x.x.a:/unix /mnt

mount.nfs: access denied by server while mounting x.x.x.a:/unix

NFSv4.x ACL Explicit DENY example

For example, the user ldapuser belongs to the group Domain Users.
sh-4.1$ id
uid=55(ldapuser) gid=513(Domain Users) groups=513(Domain Users),503(unixadmins)
context=unconfined_u:unconfined_r:unconfined_t:s0-s0:c0.c1023

Permissions on the volume mixed are 775. The owner is root and the group is Domain Users:
[root@nfsclient /]# nfs4_getfacl /mixed
A::OWNER@:rwaDxtTnNcCy
D::OWNER@:
A:g:GROUP@:rwaDxtTnNcy
D:g:GROUP@:C
A::EVERYONE@:rxtncy
D::EVERYONE@:waDTC

[root@nfsclient /]# ls -la | grep mixed

drwxrwxr-x. 3 root Domain Users 4096 Apr 30 09:52 mixed

Because ldapuser is a member of Domain Users, it should have write access to the volume, and it
does:
sh-4.1$ cd /mixed
sh-4.1$ ls -la
total 12
drwxrwxr-x. 3 root Domain Users 4096 Apr 30 09:52 .
dr-xr-xr-x. 28 root root 4096 Apr 29 15:24 ..
drwxrwxrwx. 6 root root 4096 Apr 30 08:00 .snapshot

142 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
sh-4.1$ touch newfile
sh-4.1$ nfs4_getfacl /mixed
sh-4.1$ ls -la
total 12
drwxrwxr-x. 3 root Domain Users 4096 Apr 30 09:56 .
dr-xr-xr-x. 28 root root 4096 Apr 29 15:24 ..
drwxrwxrwx. 6 root root 4096 Apr 30 08:00 .snapshot
-rw-r--r--. 1 ldapuser Domain Users 0 Apr 30 09:56 newfile

However, if the ACLs are reordered and the explicit DENY for EVERYONE is placed ahead of group, then
ldapuser is denied access to write to the same volume it just had access to write to:
[root@nfsclient /]# nfs4_getfacl /mixed
A::OWNER@:rwaDxtTnNcCy
D::OWNER@:
A::EVERYONE@:rxtncy
D::EVERYONE@:waDTC
A:g:GROUP@:rwaDxtTnNcy

[root@nfsclient /]# su ldapuser

sh-4.1$ cd /mixed
sh-4.1$ ls -la
total 12
drwxrwxr-x. 3 root Domain Users 4096 Apr 30 09:56 .
dr-xr-xr-x. 28 root root 4096 Apr 29 15:24 ..
drwxrwxrwx. 6 root root 4096 Apr 30 08:00 .snapshot
-rw-r--r--. 1 ldapuser Domain Users 0 Apr 30 09:56 newfile

sh-4.1$ touch newfile2

touch: cannot touch `newfile2': Permission denied

If the explicit DENY rule is removed, the desired access is restored:

[root@nfsclient /]# nfs4_getfacl /mixed
A::OWNER@:rwaDxtTnNcCy
D::OWNER@:
A::EVERYONE@:rxtncy
A:g:GROUP@:rwaDxtTnNcy

[root@nfsclient /]# su ldapuser

sh-4.1$ cd /mixed

sh-4.1$ ls -la
total 12
drwxrwxr-x. 3 root Domain Users 4096 Apr 30 09:56 .
dr-xr-xr-x. 28 root root 4096 Apr 29 15:24 ..
drwxrwxrwx. 6 root root 4096 Apr 30 08:00 .snapshot
-rw-r--r--. 1 ldapuser Domain Users 0 Apr 30 09:56 newfile

sh-4.1$ touch newfile2

sh-4.1$ ls -la
total 12
drwxrwxr-x. 3 root Domain Users 4096 Apr 30 10:06 .
dr-xr-xr-x. 28 root root 4096 Apr 29 15:24 ..
drwxrwxrwx. 6 root root 4096 Apr 30 08:00 .snapshot
-rw-r--r--. 1 ldapuser Domain Users 0 Apr 30 09:56 newfile
-rw-r--r--. 1 ldapuser Domain Users 0 Apr 30 10:06 newfile2

NFSv4.x ACL preservation example

This is a newly created UNIX-style volume:
cluster::> volume show -vserver vs0 -volume unix -fields security-style,
unix-permissions,user,group
vserver volume user group security-style unix-permissions
------- ------ ---- ----- -------------- ----------------
vs0 unix 0 1 unix ---rwxr-xr-x

143 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
cluster::> vserver security file-directory show -vserver vs0 -path /unix

Vserver: vs0
File Path: /unix
Security Style: unix
Effective Style: unix
DOS Attributes: 10
DOS Attributes in Text: ----D---
Expanded Dos Attributes: -
Unix User Id: 0
Unix Group Id: 1
Unix Mode Bits: 755
Unix Mode Bits in Text: rwxr-xr-x
ACLs: -

In the preceding example, the volume (/unix) has 755 permissions. That means that the owner has ALL
access, the owning group has READ/EXECUTE access, and everyone else has READ/EXECUTE
access.
Even though there are no NFSv4 ACLs in the fsecurity output, there are default values set that can be
viewed from the client:
[root@nfsclient /]# mount -t nfs4 krbsn:/unix /unix
[root@nfsclient /]# ls -la | grep unix
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root daemon 4096 Apr 30 11:24 unix
[root@nfsclient /]# nfs4_getfacl /unix
A::OWNER@:rwaDxtTnNcCy
A:g:GROUP@:rxtncy
A::EVERYONE@:rxtncy

The NFSv4 ACLs earlier show the same: the owner has ALL access, the owning group has
READ/EXECUTE access, and everyone else has READ/EXECUTE access. The default mode bits are
tied to the NFSv4 ACLs.
When mode bits are changed, the NFSv4 ACLs are also changed:
[root@nfsclient /]# chmod 775 /unix
[root@nfsclient /]# ls -la | grep unix
drwxrwxr-x. 2 root daemon 4096 Apr 30 11:24 unix
[root@nfsclient /]# nfs4_getfacl /unix
A::OWNER@:rwaDxtTnNcCy
A:g:GROUP@:rwaDxtTnNcy
A::EVERYONE@:rxtncy

When a user ACE is added to the ACL, the entry is reflected in the ACL on the appliance. In addition, the
entire ACL is now populated. Note that the ACL is in SID format.
[root@nfsclient /]# nfs4_setfacl -a A::[email protected]:ratTnNcCy /unix
[root@nfsclient /]# nfs4_getfacl /unix
A::[email protected]:ratTnNcCy
A::OWNER@:rwaDxtTnNcCy
A:g:GROUP@:rwaDxtTnNcy
A::EVERYONE@:rxtncy

cluster::> vserver security file-directory show -vserver vs0 -path /unix

Vserver: vs0
File Path: /unix
Security Style: unix
Effective Style: unix
DOS Attributes: 10
DOS Attributes in Text: ----D---
Expanded Dos Attributes: -
Unix User Id: 0
Unix Group Id: 1
Unix Mode Bits: 775
Unix Mode Bits in Text: rwxrwxr-x

144 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
 ACLs: NFSV4 Security Descriptor
Control:0x8014
DACL - ACEs
ALLOW-S-1-8-55-0x16019d
ALLOW-S-1-520-0-0x1601ff
ALLOW-S-1-520-1-0x1201ff-IG
ALLOW-S-1-520-2-0x1200a9

To see the translated ACLs, use fsecurity from the node shell on the node that owns the volume:
cluster::> node run -node node2 fsecurity show /vol/unix

[/vol/unix - Directory (inum 64)]

Security style: Unix
Effective style: Unix

DOS attributes: 0x0010 (----D---)

Unix security:
uid: 0
gid: 1
mode: 0775 (rwxrwxr-x)

NFSv4 security descriptor:

DACL:
Allow - uid: 55 - 0x0016019d
Allow - OWNER@ - 0x001601ff
Allow - GROUP@ - 0x001201ff
Allow - EVERYONE@ - 0x001200a9 (Read and Execute)
SACL:
No entries.

When a change is made to the mode bit when NFSv4 ACLs are present, the NFSv4 ACL that was just set
is wiped by default:
[root@nfsclient /]# chmod 755 /unix
[root@nfsclient /]# ls -la | grep unix
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root daemon 4096 Apr 30 11:24 unix
[root@nfsclient /]# nfs4_getfacl /unix
A::OWNER@:rwaDxtTnNcCy
A:g:GROUP@:rxtncy
A::EVERYONE@:rxtncy

cluster::> node run -node node2 fsecurity show /vol/unix

[/vol/unix - Directory (inum 64)]

Security style: Unix
Effective style: Unix

DOS attributes: 0x0010 (----D---)

Unix security:
uid: 0
gid: 1
mode: 0755 (rwxr-xr-x)

No security descriptor available.

To control this behavior in ONTAP, use the following diag-level option:

cluster::> set diag
cluster::*> nfs server modify -vserver vs0 -v4-acl-preserve [enabled|disabled]

After the option is enabled, the ACL stays intact when mode bits are set.
[root@nfsclient /]# nfs4_setfacl -a A::[email protected]:ratTnNcCy /unix
[root@nfsclient /]# ls -la | grep unix
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root daemon 4096 Apr 30 11:24 unix
[root@nfsclient /]# nfs4_getfacl /unix

145 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
A::[email protected]:ratTnNcCy
A::OWNER@:rwaDxtTnNcCy
A:g:GROUP@:rxtncy
A::EVERYONE@:rxtncy

cluster::> vserver security file-directory show -vserver vs0 -path /unix

Vserver: vs0
File Path: /unix
Security Style: unix
Effective Style: unix
DOS Attributes: 10
DOS Attributes in Text: ----D---
Expanded Dos Attributes: -
Unix User Id: 0
Unix Group Id: 1
Unix Mode Bits: 755
Unix Mode Bits in Text: rwxr-xr-x
ACLs: NFSV4 Security Descriptor
Control:0x8014
DACL - ACEs
ALLOW-S-1-8-55-0x16019d
ALLOW-S-1-520-0-0x1601ff
ALLOW-S-1-520-1-0x1200a9-IG
ALLOW-S-1-520-2-0x1200a9

cluster::> node run -node node2 fsecurity show /vol/unix

[/vol/unix - Directory (inum 64)]

Security style: Unix
Effective style: Unix

DOS attributes: 0x0010 (----D---)

Unix security:
uid: 0
gid: 1
mode: 0755 (rwxr-xr-x)

NFSv4 security descriptor:

DACL:
Allow - uid: 55 - 0x0016019d
Allow - OWNER@ - 0x001601ff
Allow - GROUP@ - 0x001200a9 (Read and Execute)
Allow - EVERYONE@ - 0x001200a9 (Read and Execute)
SACL:
No entries.

Note that the ACL is still intact after mode bits are set.
[root@nfsclient /]# chmod 777 /unix
[root@nfsclient /]# ls -la | grep unix
drwxrwxrwx. 2 root daemon 4096 Apr 30 11:24 unix
[root@nfsclient /]# nfs4_getfacl /unix
A::[email protected]:ratTnNcCy
A::OWNER@:rwaDxtTnNcCy
A:g:GROUP@:rwaDxtTnNcy
A::EVERYONE@:rwaDxtTnNcy

cluster::> vserver security file-directory show -vserver vs0 -path /unix

Vserver: vs0
File Path: /unix
Security Style: unix
Effective Style: unix
DOS Attributes: 10
DOS Attributes in Text: ----D---
Expanded Dos Attributes: -
Unix User Id: 0
Unix Group Id: 1

146 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
 Unix Mode Bits: 777
Unix Mode Bits in Text: rwxrwxrwx
ACLs: NFSV4 Security Descriptor
Control:0x8014
DACL - ACEs
ALLOW-S-1-8-55-0x16019d
ALLOW-S-1-520-0-0x1601ff
ALLOW-S-1-520-1-0x1201ff-IG
ALLOW-S-1-520-2-0x1201ff

cluster::*> node run -node node2 fsecurity show /vol/unix

[/vol/unix - Directory (inum 64)]

Security style: Unix
Effective style: Unix

DOS attributes: 0x0010 (----D---)

Unix security:
uid: 0
gid: 1
mode: 0777 (rwxrwxrwx)

NFSv4 security descriptor:

DACL:
Allow - uid: 55 - 0x0016019d
Allow - OWNER@ - 0x001601ff
Allow - GROUP@ - 0x001201ff
Allow - EVERYONE@ - 0x001201ff
SACL:
No entries.

NFS audit event example

The following example is from an audit event using NFSv3:
- <Event>
- <System>
<Provider Name="Netapp-Security-Auditing" />
<EventID>4663</EventID>
<EventName>Get Object Attributes</EventName>
<Version>1</Version>
<Source>NFSv3</Source>
<Level>0</Level>
<Opcode>0</Opcode>
<Keywords>0x8020000000000000</Keywords>
<Result>Audit Success</Result>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2013-08-08T20:36:05.011243000Z" />
<Correlation />
<Channel>Security</Channel>
<Computer>e284de25-3edc-11e2-92d0-123478563412/525c9a2c-dce2-11e2-b94f-123478563412</Computer>
<Security />
</System>
- <EventData>
<Data Name="SubjectIP" IPVersion="4">x.x.x.x</Data>
<Data Name="SubjectUnix" Uid="10000" Gid="503" Local="false" />
<Data Name="ObjectServer">Security</Data>
<Data Name="ObjectType">Directory</Data>
<Data Name="HandleID">00000000000453;00;00000040;3a2cada4</Data>
<Data Name="ObjectName">/</Data>
<Data Name="InformationRequested">File Type; File Size; Last Accessed Time; Last Metadata
Modfied Time; Last Modified Time; Unix Mode; Unix Owner; Unix Group;</Data>
</EventData>
</Event>

NFSv4.x Referral Example

The data volume lives on node1.

147 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
cluster::> volume show -vserver vs0 -volume nfsvol -fields node
vserver volume node
------- ------ -------------
vs0 nfsvol node1

The data LIF lives on node2.

cluster::> net int show -vserver vs0 -lif data2 -fields curr-node,home-node
(network interface show)
vserver lif home-node curr-node address
------- ----- ------------- ------------- -----------
vs0 data2 node2 node2 x.x.x.a

There is also a data LIF on node1.

cluster::> net int show -vserver vs0 -curr-node node1 -role data
(network interface show)
Logical Status Network Current Current Is
Vserver Interface Admin/Oper Address/Mask Node Port Home
----------- ---------- ---------- ------------------ ------------- ------- ----
vs0
data1 up/up x.x.x.a/24 node1 e0a true

The client makes a mount request to the data LIF on node2, at the IP address x.x.x.a.
[root@nfsclient /]# mount -t nfs4 x.x.x.a:/nfsvol /mnt

The mount location looks to be at the IP address specified by the client.

[root@nfsclient /]# mount | grep /mnt
x.x.x.a:/nfsvol on /mnt type nfs4 (rw,addr=x.x.x.a,clientaddr=x.x.x.z)

But the cluster shows that the connection was actually established to node1, where the data volume lives.
No connection was made to node2.
cluster::> network connections active show -node node1 -service nfs*
Vserver Interface Remote
CID Ctx Name Name:Local Port Host:Port Protocol/Service
--------- --- --------- ----------------- -------------------- ----------------
Node: node1
286571835 6 vs0 data:2049 x.x.x.z:763 TCP/nfs

cluster::> network connections active show -node node2 -service nfs*

There are no entries matching your query.

NFS connected-clients sample output

The following shows sample output of the NFS connected-clients command:
cluster::*> nfs connected-clients show -vserver DEMO

Node: node1
Vserver: DEMO
Data-Ip: 10.x.x.a
Client-Ip Volume-Name Protocol Idle-Time Local-Reqs Remote-Reqs
--------------- ---------------- -------- ------------- ---------- -----------
10.x.x.b scripts nfs3 1h 3m 46s 391 0
10.x.x.c XCP_catalog nfs3 17s 0 372
10.x.x.d scripts nfs3 17s 372 0
10.x.x.c home nfs4 12h 50m 28s 256 0
10.x.x.b home nfs4.1 9h 51m 48s 47 0

148 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Performance comparison: NFSv3 and NFSv4 Using nconnect and pNFS
In our CPOC labs, real-world workloads are run in a controlled lab environment to illustrate the potential
performance and feature benefits of NetApp products.
In one such CPOC lab, a sequential read workload was tested by using the following components:
• Single NVIDIA DGX-2 client
• Ubuntu 20.04.2
• NFSv4.1 with pNFS and nconnect
• AFF A400 cluster
• NetApp FlexGroup volume
• 256K wsize/rsize
• 100GbE connections
• 32x 1GB files
In these tests, the following results were seen. Latency for both were sub 1ms.

Table 32) NFSv4.1/pNFS/nconnect vs. NFSv3 – sequential reads.

Test Bandwidth
NFSv3 10.2GBps
NFSv4.1/pNFS 21.9GBps

Note: Both NFSv3 and NFSv4.1 used nconnect=16.

In these tests, NFSv4.1 with pNFS doubled the performance for the sequential read workload at 250us
latency. Because the files were 1GB in size, the reads were almost entirely from the controller RAM.
Some examples of sequential workloads include:
• Hadoop
• VMware
• Database workloads
• High-performance computing workloads
• Media workloads
If you have a sequential workload, consider NFSv4.1, pNFS and nconnect for the best performance
experience. Remember that workloads with large amounts of getattrs/high metadata (such as
EDA/software build) will likely not see the same performance gains as these types of workloads. If you
want to find out more about the CPOC labs, contact your NetApp sales team.
Note: Oracle workloads can also benefit from NFSv4.1 and pNFS, but instead of using nconnect, use
dNFS for the best overall results. See TR-3633: Oracle Databases on ONTAP for details and
listen to the Tech ONTAP Podcast Episode 279: NetApp and Oracle – What’s New.

Performance examples for different TCP maximum transfer Window sizes

The following examples include the following performance tests using multithreaded file and directory
creations:
• High file count (one million files – 1,000 directories and 1,000x 4KB files per directory)
• Low file count, larger files (16 files – 16 directories, 1x 2GB files per directory; parallel dd writing to
/dev/urandom with 4KB block size)
The scripts can be found here: https://github.com/whyistheinternetbroken/NetAppFlexGroup/.

149 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
The goal for these tests was not to show the maximum possible performance; to do that, we would have
sued larger AFF systems, more nodes in the cluster, more clients, and so on.
Instead, there are three goals for these tests:
• Show the impact of different wsize and rsize values on different workload types.
• Show NFSv3, NFSv4.1, and NFSv4.2 performance comparisons.
• Show the effect that NFS Kerberos has for these workloads.
These tests were run five times each and the values were averaged out for a more accurate
representation of the results.
Here are some key points about the test environment:
• NFSv3, NFSv4.1 and NFSv4.2 (with and without pNFS)
• Clients:
− Two RHEL 8.3 VMs
− nconnect=8
− TCP slot tables left as defaults (65536)
− Virtual memory tuned to 40% vm.dirty_ratio and 20% vm.dirty_background_ratio
• AFF A300 HA pair – two nodes (ONTAP 9.9.1)
• FlexGroup volume (16 member volumes, 8 per node)
• 10GB network
Note: This test was not intended to show the maximum performance of NFS or the systems being
used, but to show comparisons between NFS versions and block sizes using tests on the
same network and hardware.
The NFS operations for the 4KB file test breakdown looked like this (even create/lookup/write):
Object: nfsv3
Instance: DEMO
Counter Value
-------------------------------- --------------------------------
access_total 1017
create_percent 33%
create_total 1000000
fsinfo_total 4
getattr_total 3
lookup_percent 33%
lookup_total 1000003
mkdir_total 1003
null_total 4
pathconf_total 2
total_ops 36169
write_percent 33%
write_total 1000000

The NFS operations for the 2GB file test breakdown looked like this (100% write):
Object: nfsv3
Instance: DEMO
Number of Constituents: 2 (complete_aggregation)
Counter Value
-------------------------------- --------------------------------
access_total 32
create_total 16
fsinfo_total 4
getattr_total 18
lookup_total 19
mkdir_total 19
null_total 4

150 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
 pathconf_total 2
total_ops 3045
write_percent 99%
write_total 511520

Test #1: High file count test – Many folders and files
This test created approximately one million 4KB files across 1,000 folders and used multiple different TCP
transfer size values with the mounts. The file creation method was an f.write call from Python that wrote
16 characters over and over again to a file until it reaches 4KB in size. This generated more NFS
operations. This test used multiple different transfer sizes, NFS versions (NFSv3, NFSv4.1, NFSv4.2) and
NFSv4.1 with and without pNFS, using nconnect=8.
Table 33 breaks down the average completion times, average IOPs, and average throughput for each
protocol and wsize/rsize value, as well as average CPU busy%.
The commands qos statistics performance show (for latency, IOPS and throughput) and
statistics show-periodic (for CPU busy %) were used to collect this information.

Table 33) High file count test results – one million files.
Test Completion time Average IOPS Average MBps
(seconds)
NFSv3 – 64K wsize/rsize ~68.6 ~55836 ~72.6
NFSv3 – 256K wsize/rsize ~71 ~55574 ~72.2
NFSv3 – 1MB wsize/rsize ~73.1 ~55865 ~72.7
NFSv4.1 – 64K wsize/rsize ~251.1 ~11182 ~15.4
NFSv4.1 – 256K wsize/rsize ~259.5 ~12041 ~15.7
NFSv4.1 – 1MB wsize/rsize ~257.9 ~11956 ~15.6
NFSv4.1 – 64K wsize/rsize (pNFS) ~254 ~11818 ~15.4
NFSv4.1 – 256K wsize/rsize (pNFS) ~253.9 ~11688 ~15.2
NFSv4.1 – 1MB wsize/rsize (pNFS) ~253.1 ~11850 ~15.4
NFSv4.2 – 64K wsize/rsize (pNFS) ~256.3 ~11756 ~15.5
NFSv4.2 – 256K wsize/rsize (pNFS) ~255.5 ~11890 ~15.4
NFSv4.2 – 1MB wsize/rsize (pNFS) ~256.1 ~11764 ~15.2

Table 34) High file count test results – one million files – average CPU busy % and average latency.
Test Average total latency (ms) Average CPU busy %
NFSv3 – 64K wsize/rsize ~15.4 ~64%
NFSv3 – 256K wsize/rsize ~15.1 ~63%
NFSv3 – 1MB wsize/rsize ~15.3 ~63%
NFSv4.1 – 64K wsize/rsize ~30.3 ~27%
NFSv4.1 – 256K wsize/rsize ~29.8 ~27%
NFSv4.1 – 1MB wsize/rsize ~30 ~27%
NFSv4.1 (pNFS) – 64K wsize/rsize ~30.5 ~26%
NFSv4.1 (pNFS) – 256K wsize/rsize ~30.9 ~26%
NFSv4.1 (pNFS) – 1MB wsize/rsize ~30.4 ~26%
NFSv4.2 (pNFS) – 64K wsize/rsize ~30.3 ~26%
NFSv4.2 (pNFS) – 256K wsize/rsize ~30.1 ~26%

151 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
 Test Average total latency (ms) Average CPU busy %
NFSv4.2 (pNFS) – 1MB wsize/rsize ~30.5 ~27%

Observations
• Regardless of the mount’s wsize/rsize options, roughly the same number of IOPS were generated
because of the nature of the workload (many small files). Regardless of whether we sent blocks in
64K or 1MB chunks, we still only sent 4K files, so the client sent those one by one. The average
maximum throughput did not change much for NFSv3, but had some increases with larger wsize/rsize
values.
• Overall, NFSv3 performed substantially better than NFSv4.x for this type of workload (up to 3.5x
better) in ONTAP 9.9.1, generally because of better throughput and higher IOPS.
• NFSv4.x had lower overall CPU busy % because it generated fewer overall IOPS. Less operations to
process = less CPU to use.
• pNFS didn’t help performance much here.
• NFSv4.2 did not offer benefits for performance over NFSv4.1.

Test #2: Low file count test – Fewer, larger files

This test created 16x 2GB files (16 folders, one file per folder) by using a multithreaded dd operation,
where a process per folder was created on each client. This test used multiple different transfer sizes,
NFS versions (NFSv3, NFSv4.1, NFSv4.2) and NFSv4.x with and without pNFS. The file creation was
done by using dd in parallel with 4KB block sizes using /dev/urandom to ensure storage efficiencies
didn’t affect file sizes too much. This generated more of a pure throughput test.

Table 35) Low file count test results – 2GB files.

Test Completion time Average IOPS Average MBps
(seconds)
NFSv3 – 64K wsize/rsize ~148.4 ~3566 ~222.8
NFSv3 – 256K wsize/rsize ~147.7 ~901 ~225.2
NFSv3 – 1MB wsize/rsize ~148.7 ~226 ~225
NFSv4.1 – 64K wsize/rsize ~148.6 ~3578 ~223.6
NFSv4.1 – 256K wsize/rsize ~147.6 ~900 ~224.8
NFSv4.1 – 1MB wsize/rsize ~148.1 ~226 ~225
NFSv4.1 (pNFS) – 64K wsize/rsize ~148.1 ~3572 ~222.4
NFSv4.1 (pNFS) – 256K wsize/rsize ~147.3 ~902 ~224.5
NFSv4.1 (pNFS) – 1MB wsize/rsize ~147.5 ~228 ~223.4
NFSv4.2 (pNFS) – 64K wsize/rsize ~147.9 ~3593 ~224.3
NFSv4.2 (pNFS) – 256K wsize/rsize ~148.1 ~903 ~224.6
NFSv4.2 (pNFS) – 1MB wsize/rsize ~147.7 ~229 ~224.3

Table 36) Low file count test results – Average CPU busy % and average latency.
Test Average total latency (ms) Average CPU busy %
NFSv3 – 64K wsize/rsize ~0.44 ~28%
NFSv3 – 256K wsize/rsize ~0.87 ~25%
NFSv3 – 1MB wsize/rsize ~3.98 ~25%
NFSv4.1 – 64K wsize/rsize ~0.44 ~30%
NFSv4.1 – 256K wsize/rsize ~0.89 ~27%

152 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
 Test Average total latency (ms) Average CPU busy %
NFSv4.1 – 1MB wsize/rsize ~4.15 ~26%
NFSv4.1 (pNFS) – 64K wsize/rsize ~0.31 ~29%
NFSv4.1 (pNFS) – 256K wsize/rsize ~0.65 ~25%
NFSv4.1 (pNFS) – 1MB wsize/rsize ~2.51 ~26%
NFSv4.2 (pNFS) – 64K wsize/rsize ~0.35 ~28%
NFSv4.2 (pNFS) – 256K wsize/rsize ~0.65 ~25%
NFSv4.2 (pNFS) – 1MB wsize/rsize ~2.1 ~25%

Observations
• Generally speaking, NFSv3 and NFSv4.x performed nearly identically for this type of workload. The
completion times for the tests were within 1–2 seconds of each other and the throughput numbers
were all similar across the board. The main difference was in average latency.
• NFSv4.x had lower latency than NFSv3 – especially when using pNFS to ensure data locality. Having
data requests use the cluster network added between 0.1 and 1.5 ms write latency to the workloads
(depending on mount wsize) and 100–110MB of additional traffic across the cluster network.
• With NFSv4.2, there was no real noticeable performance increase from NFSv4.1 except when using
1MB wsize (~.4ms improvement).
• For sequential workloads that were mostly reads/writes, NFSv4.1 and later with pNFS performed just
as well as NFSv3 for the same workloads.

NFS Kerberos performance testing

Our CPOC lab recently did some performance testing for NFSv3 vs. NFSv4.1 using NFS Kerberos (krb5,
krb5i, krb5p). For more information, see TR-4616: NFS Kerberos in ONTAP. These numbers are not
intended to show what the best possible performance is, but instead to show what the impact of Kerberos
is on NFS operations.
• The testing suite used was vdbench with a 50/50 read/write mix, 100% random, at 32K blocksize.
• A single CentOS 7.9 client was used to mount a NetApp A400 system running ONTAP 9.8 with an
MTU size of 9000 and rsize/wsize of 64K. The average of 4 test runs were used to calculate these
values.
• NFSv4.1 was using pNFS.

Table 37) NFS Kerberos results.

Test Average IOPS Average throughput (MBps) Average latency (ms)
NFSv3 - sys ~23839 ~745 ~0.5
NFSv3 – krb5 ~12158 ~380 ~2.9
NFSv3 – krb5i ~10688 ~334 ~1.1
NFSv3 – krb5p ~5633 ~176 ~2.2
NFSv4.1 - sys ~24102 ~753 ~0.5
NFSv4.1 – krb5 ~11351 ~355 ~3.2
NFSv4.1 – krb5i ~10856 ~338 ~1.1
NFSv4.1 – krb5p ~5579 ~174 ~2.1

153 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Table 38) NFS Kerberos – Performance comparison versus nonencrypted baseline.
Test IOPS Throughput (MBps) Latency (ms)
NFSv3 – krb5 -49% -49% +480%
NFSv3 – krb5i -55% -55% +120%
NFSv3 – krb5p -76% -76% +340%
NFSv4.1 – krb5 -53% -53% +540%
NFSv4.1 – krb5i -55% -55% +120%
NFSv4.1 – krb5p -77% -77% +320%

Observations
Overall, NFS Kerberos substantially decreased performance for all NFS versions. IOPS and throughput
were decreased because the storage took longer to process encrypted packets and latency was
increased during that time as well. Not all workloads are affected the same, so be sure to test in your
environment.

Default NFS ports in ONTAP

Table 39) Default NFS Ports in ONTAP.
NFS service ONTAP port Applicable NFS version Option to change the port
mountd 635 NFSv3 -mountd-port
portmapper 111 NFSv3 N/A – Cannot be changed
NLM 4045 NFSv3 -nlm-port
NSM 4046 NFSv3 -nsm-port
NFS 2049 NFSv3 and NFSv4.x N/A: cannot be changed
rquota 4049 NFSv3 -rquotad-port

A special thanks to Kelly Alexander, CPOC labs, NetApp (Kerberos performance information).

Where to find additional information

Request for comments (RFC)
• RFC 2203: RPCSEC_GSS Protocol Specification
• RFC 3530: Network File System (NFS) Version 4 Protocol
• RFC 5661: Network File System (NFS) Version 4 Minor Version 1 Protocol
• RFC 5331: RPC: Remote Procedure Call Protocol Specification Version 2

Technical reports
• TR-3580: NFSv4 Enhancements and Best Practices Guide: Data ONTAP Implementation
• TR-3633: Oracle Databases on NetApp ONTAP
• TR-4073: Secure Unified Authentication
• TR-4523: DNS Load Balancing in ONTAP
• TR-4543: SMB Best Practices, ONTAP 9.x
• TR-4557: NetApp FlexGroup Volume Technical Overview
• TR-4571: NetApp FlexGroup Volume Best Practices and Implementation Guide

154 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
• TR-4668: Name Services Best Practices
• TR-4616: NFS Kerberos in ONTAP with Microsoft Active Directory
• TR-4617: Electronic Design Automation Best Practices
• TR-4743: FlexCache in ONTAP
• TR-4835: How to Configure LDAP in ONTAP

Version history
Version Date Document version history
Version 1.0 June 2013 Initial release
Version 2.0 October 2013 Updated for ONTAP 8.2
Version 2.1 January 2014 Updated for ONTAP 8.2.1
Version 2.2 September 2014 Updated for ONTAP 8.2.2
Version 3.0 February 2015 Updated for ONTAP 8.3
Version 3.1 July 2015 Updated for ONTAP 8.3.1
Version 3.2 February 2016 Updated for ONTAP 8.3.2
Version 4.0 July 2016 Updated for ONTAP 9.0
Version 4.1 October 2016 Updated for ONTAP 9.1
Version 4.2 July 2017 Updated for ONTAP 9.2
Version 5.0 June 2020 Major revision; Updated for ONTAP 9.7
Version 5.1 February 2021 Updated for ONTAP 9.8
Version 5.2 June 2021 Updated for ONTAP 9.9.1

155 NFS in NetApp ONTAP: Best practices and implementation guide © 2021 NetApp, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Refer to the Interoperability Matrix Tool (IMT) on the NetApp Support site to validate that the exact
product and feature versions described in this document are supported for your specific environment. The
NetApp IMT defines the product components and versions that can be used to construct configurations
that are supported by NetApp. Specific results depend on each customer’s installation in accordance with
published specifications.
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