Windows cannot connect to multiple shares to same NAS.

[ianm_ozzy]

Hi all.

 I only use windows or gaming, and is is fine for that, but extremely frustrating when it comes to network setups.

 

My games are on my main server, specifically truenas scale. the are multiple copies  making good use of deduplication.

 

I have just setup an old machine with truenas as a the OS.  It is working as expected. I use it to store backups of the games & other files.

Access & shares works perfectly fine when using linux.

 

The games are stored on ISCSI block devices, so only accessable through a single machine each.

 

The machine is windows 10 OS , which is attached to ISCSI.

I need to  back it up, ggames and such to the  backup machine I setup.

It need to map  multiple  network drives  one the windows machine to the  backup NAS with different credentials.

It can only access one share on the server at a  time.

 

How do I force windows to allow multiple  network drive mappings to the same NAS server?

It can only do 'one at a time' it seems.

 

It is extremely frustrating.

 

It has a local account only for good reason and wish to completely avoid the MS store.

 

Thanks

 

 

[Jarsky]

Are your shares using different permissions?

Try using the hostname for one, and the ip address for the other. 

 

e.g

\\hostname\share1

\\1.2.3.4\share2

 

You cannot apply different permissions for different SMB shares on the same hostname\address. 

 

Something I also do is create an alternative static dns entry as an alias for additional SMB shares that have different permissions. 

Using alternative hostnames stops it from reusing the existing connection, and to specify different credentials. 

 

I have a generic share which is Read-Only to anyone (guests)

I also have a backup share which is Read-Write by authorized credentials only. 

e.g

\\MYNAS.local.lan\share

\\BACKUP.local.lan\backup

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ianm_ozzy]

On 3/20/2024 at 10:33 AM, Jarsky said:

Are your shares using different permissions?

Try using the hostname for one, and the ip address for the other. 

 

e.g

\\hostname\share1

\\1.2.3.4\share2

 

You cannot apply different permissions for different SMB shares on the same hostname\address. 

 

Something I also do is create an alternative static dns entry as an alias for additional SMB shares that have different permissions. 

Using alternative hostnames stops it from reusing the existing connection, and to specify different credentials. 

 

I have a generic share which is Read-Only to anyone (guests)

I also have a backup share which is Read-Write by authorized credentials only. 

e.g

\\MYNAS.local.lan\share

\\BACKUP.local.lan\backup

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you for the reply.

 

Well it is 2  shares to the same NAS with different credentials.

 It is a problem.

I have already done something similar to what you suggested.

I setup a DNS entry  pointing to the NAS in my router.

 

Now  on the same windows machine, there is a share connecting to that,  and one just using the NAS  IP address.

 

I only use windows for games.  There is a need to do some basic network share access on it, and it is frustrating.  The purpose is to backup the games.

It needs multiples, as one share  uses deduplication on the NAS , and the other not.

 

Apparently it is a windows security 'feature'  that is not so hard to get around.

 

It  all shows how exceptionally awful networking & security on windows is.

 

As I stated windows is for games, but everything else I have learned to use linux.

 

 

[Alex Atkin UK]

2 hours ago, ianm_ozzy said:

Thank you for the reply.

 

Well it is 2  shares to the same NAS with different credentials.

 It is a problem.

I have already done something similar to what you suggested.

I setup a DNS entry  pointing to the NAS in my router.

 

Now  on the same windows machine, there is a share connecting to that,  and one just using the NAS  IP address.

 

I only use windows for games.  There is a need to do some basic network share access on it, and it is frustrating.  The purpose is to backup the games.

It needs multiples, as one share  uses deduplication on the NAS , and the other not.

 

Apparently it is a windows security 'feature'  that is not so hard to get around.

 

It  all shows how exceptionally awful networking & security on windows is.

 

As I stated windows is for games, but everything else I have learned to use linux.

 

 

The whole point of how shares work is you should be handling permissions on the server for that single user.  Using different users for different shares is a rather backwards way to be doing it.

[ianm_ozzy]

On 3/21/2024 at 2:22 PM, Alex Atkin UK said:

The whole point of how shares work is you should be handling permissions on the server for that single user.  Using different users for different shares is a rather backwards way to be doing it.

Why exactly?

 

Some shares  use deduplicaion to save space - and  money on hard drives.

Some do  not,   and not practical to do it for both.

It means using multiple shares.

 

Please explain exactly how this is done on truenas scale?

[Alex Atkin UK]

5 minutes ago, ianm_ozzy said:

Why exactly?

 

One share  uses deduplicaion to save space - and  money on hard drives.

The other does not & not practical to do it for both.

It means using multiple shares.

 

Please explain exactly how this is done on truenas scale?

Because network sharing is designed around the concept of this user is connecting to the NAS, and these are the permissions the user has on these shares.

 

Connecting as multiple different users from the same Windows login is contrary to how its designed to work.  I don't understand what you are doing here that requires credentials?

 

I don't see the point of having all games centrally on iSCSI either vs each client having its local copy on a fast NVME drive.  Are the "Windows machines" VMs and you are doing this for the deduplication rather than using VM images?

 

Even with iSCSI, moving data over the network is far less efficient than NVME where its over the local PCIe bus.  In a datacentre they use stupidly expensive and fast network adapters to minimise the overhead, as for them its a benefit in being able to move that virtual storage between physical servers in an instant.  On a home network, I don't see how that makes sense, at least for gaming.

[ianm_ozzy]

7 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Because network sharing is designed around the concept of this user is connecting to the NAS, and these are the permissions the user has on these shares.

 

Connecting as multiple different users from the same Windows login is contrary to how its designed to work.  I don't understand what you are doing here that requires credentials?

 

I don't see the point of having all games centrally on iSCSI either vs each client having its local copy on a fast NVME drive.  Are the "Windows machines" VMs and you are doing this for the deduplication rather than using VM images?

 

Even with iSCSI, moving data over the network is far less efficient than NVME where its over the local PCIe bus.  In a datacentre they use stupidly expensive and fast network adapters to minimise the overhead, as for them its a benefit in being able to move that virtual storage between physical servers in an instant.  On a home network, I don't see how that makes sense, at least for gaming.

 

The main purpose  I have games on the NAS  and ISCSI is deduplication.

Also snapshots & compression & redundancy.

All on hard drive storage.  So multiple presently 6TB of games, compressed to about 4.5TB of  actual space needed.

So  if I wanted   to just use NMVE,  then 3 x 8TB nvme drives.  You can pay for them and send to me if you want.

Where is  your logic?

 

One the 'gaming' machines, have  much cheaper 1/2TB NVME cache drives and  this  very useful software https://www.romexsoftware.com/en-us/primo-cache/

Games I play often  load from nvme cache automatically and  do no really worry about it

Oh and  the lancache server  means  game updates are up to local network speed,  2.5Gb - https://lancache.net/  This is  container on the main server.

Also I have  cheap 100Mb. internet and  game updates exceptionally fast due to the lancache.  An ongoing savour of  cash.

 

I am looking into 10GB local networking as it has become much much cheaper recently.

 

So games typically update fairly fast.  typically they are on the NAS already, so little actual writes to the  slower hard drives - thanks to deduplication.

 

As for the multiple shares of  backups of games to another server.

I DESPISE windows networking.  I only use cifs shares  to backup the games.

I ask again.

How exactly do you use the same share  when I want to use deduplication for some of the files on there,  but not others?

The purpose is to save money on drives.

I have it working the way I want and are curious why you even care.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Alex Atkin UK]

4 minutes ago, ianm_ozzy said:

I have it working the way I want and are curious why you even care.

Its clearly not working how you want as you've run into a snag where what you are doing is completely contrary to how the Windows shares permissions system works.  Also you mentioned iSCSI in the post, seems its not really relevant to your problem but it does add an additional bottleneck to what you are doing if its going to be copying to the iSCSI drive and the SMB backup server over the same network.

 

You have a LAN cache, so why do you need ALL those games accessible on all machines at all times?  It just seems an overcomplicated setup to have games always available with slower loading speeds than using local storage.  By your own admission, the deduplication is the reason you ran into this snag in the first place.

 

There's a lot more knowledgable networking folk on this forum than me, the fact they haven't responded speaks volumes to me about if this convoluted setup you have makes any sense.

 

I mean you have the LAN cache, so why do you need to backup the games on the iSCSI drives?

[ianm_ozzy]

40 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Its clearly not working how you want as you've run into a snag where what you are doing is completely contrary to how the Windows shares permissions system works.  Also you mentioned iSCSI in the post, seems its not really relevant to your problem but it does add an additional bottleneck to what you are doing if its going to be copying to the iSCSI drive and the SMB backup server over the same network.

 

You have a LAN cache, so why do you need ALL those games accessible on all machines at all times?  It just seems an overcomplicated setup to have games always available with slower loading speeds than using local storage.  By your own admission, the deduplication is the reason you ran into this snag in the first place.

 

There's a lot more knowledgable networking folk on this forum than me, the fact they haven't responded speaks volumes to me about if this convoluted setup you have makes any sense.

 

I mean you have the LAN cache, so why do you need to backup the games on the iSCSI drives?

I play games off the NAS with the cahe setup I desribed. - that uses ISCSI - multiple ISCSI - working as expected.

Promxox with truenas scale as VM.

 

The backup of  the games in on another machine. The  backup(s). are  standard windows shares.

It has truenas scale.

 

Deduplication  is the reason  to save  on drive costs. - on both machines.

I care little for windows networking and only have to use it to backup games, as I use windows for games.

 

Why put bacsups on ISCSI.  Where did I state that?

 

From my previous reply:

'I ask again.

How exactly do you use the same share  when I want to use deduplication for some of the files on there,  but not others?'

 

If unable to answer, will certainly be ignoring.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Alex Atkin UK]

21 hours ago, ianm_ozzy said:

Why exactly?

 

Some shares  use deduplicaion to save space - and  money on hard drives.

Some do  not,   and not practical to do it for both.

It means using multiple shares.

 

Please explain exactly how this is done on truenas scale?

The problem here is you keep asking for instructions on how to do something that if its even possible would be a hack, and you've not explained exactly why you think you need to do this.

 

Given nobody else is replying, I think that's a pretty clear indication that the real solution here is to try to figure out if this can be done the right way to begin with.

 

I'm not familiar with truenas scale but typically anything using SAMBA will work on the same principle.  You have a share, you set which users have read access, which users have write access and often the OS user/group the files on that share are owned by.

 

eg If you have two shares, one pointing to a location you are using de-duplication and one without, they would both have permission from the same user account.

 

As for my previous question, I didn't say you were backing up to iSCSI, you said the PCs store their games on iSCSI drives and therefore if you are doing a backup its reading from those iSCSI drives over the network, and then sending that data to the shares.  This means you are doubling the bandwidth use on the network and it will all be very very slow due to how much worse network IO is compared to physically connected drives.

 

For example, I backup my server using USB drives directly connected to it.  Because copying to a USB drive completes the backup about ten times faster than over the network would.  Not due to bandwidth, but the inherent performance issues with network shares, especially when doing lots of small files vs a few large ones.  But in your configuration you'd have the bandwidth bottleneck AND the IO bottleneck.  Yet you have those games already backed up on your LAN cache, so why do they need backing up again anyway?

 

As for "why I was questioning your use of de-duplication", well mainly as it seems to be highly recommended to NOT use it.  

 

That link suggests the cost of the hardware to make it work reliably (once your drives start filling up) would greatly outweigh the cost of having a large NVME drive on each PC.  Quite apart from the fact having that storage would be orders of magnitude better performance.  I'm concerned if you sort this problem out, some time down the line your de-duplication iSCSI solution is going to completely fall over due to lack of RAM and it will all have been a huge waste of time.

[ianm_ozzy]

This is becoming hilarious.

Original problem: fixed with a workaround.

Concern: a windows update breaks it.

Probable solution: Use  the basic gigabit  onboard nic of the backup nas for access to different IP/MAC Address/cifs login.

 

I find you parroting the 'Deduplication is Bad' narrative amusing.

 Perhaps watch this:

 

This made me  curious as to how the deduplication was going.

 

So appropriate output of 'sudo zpool status   -Dv'  when logged into the non backup nas.

 

dedup: DDT entries 6756772, size 951B on disk, 307B in core

 

Quick calculations:

 Nearly 6GB of disk space needed - mirrored optane drives.

 Nearly 2GB memory  needed.

 

Oh the humanity. My computer is going to blow up.

 

The values were about the same the last time I checked - a month ago I think.

It  has been running for nearly a year using deduplication.

There have been many many games updates reads/writes since then.

 

The key to getting it to play nice are 1MB block/record sizes. Not an issue for games. Just format with 1MB block sizes in windows.

 

I do not claim to  an expert on this.

 

Something more useful perhaps.

https://www.truenas.com/community/threads/deduplication-with-big-record-size.111645/

 

Bye