HP Announces Industry-Leading UNIX/Windows Interoperability with CIFS/9000

Tightly integrated with the UNIX environment, HP's CIF/9000 completes the Common Internet File System path to scalable and secure UNIX/Windows interoperability.

Introduction

Interoperability between Windows and UNIX systems is a major challenge to your enterprise computing and e-business environments. The global reach of the Internet, the disappearance of trade barriers, and the increasingly technology- and information-intensive nature of products and business activities all make it unlikely that your customers will tolerate the old barriers between Windows and UNIX.

Who wants to put up with the accessibility problems of conventional file systems where Windows users can access files on UNIX but the reverse is not true? Who has time for the authentication nightmare caused by Windows and UNIX, whose differing authentication schemes force your administrators to burn valuable cycles keeping two sets of passwords and user IDs?

You no longer need to tolerate these barriers. Your Windows/UNIX interoperability problems are virtually solved by two interlinked products: Microsoft's Common Internet File System offers a Windows-side solution while HP's new CIFS/9000--the part of HP-UX that provides Common Internet File System modules for both HP 9000 servers and workstations--completes the interoperability path on the UNIX side. Both of these products are included free of charge with, respectively, Windows (Common Internet File System) and HP-UX (CIFS/9000).

Common Internet File System is the Windows specification for remote file access. It is a standard part of every recent and future Windows system (including Windows 95, 98, NT 4.0, and 2000), which means that millions of users already have Common Internet File System built into their operating system. And thanks to Microsoft and other champions, Common Internet File System is virtually sure to become the standard in the future.

Uniting the UNIX and Windows worlds, Hewlett-Packard has introduced CIFS/9000, the Common Internet File System product for HP-UX 11. Together, CIFS/9000 and Common Internet File System deliver the very best interoperability for environments with a mix of UNIX and Windows platforms. They have features that enable global engineering collaboration, faster times to market, and more efficient IT management. In short, this solution creates a flexible, scalable, and highly interoperable infrastructure that allows you to meet the demands of business and industry today-and well into the future.

Features and Benefits

• The Common Internet File System comes standard with all Windows platforms (Windows 95 and later), and is automatically ignited on HP-UX 11. There are no add-on products to purchase.
  
  
• By providing both server and client for HP-UX 11, these products offer an industry-leading solution for UNIX and Windows interoperability.
  
  
• Since both products use TCP/IP networking, they provide you with a reliable connection-oriented protocol that offers scalable performance over both local and wide area networks.
  
  
• Both products provide advanced, robust client caching, which means you get higher performance with locally cached data--ideal for your Internet applications.
  
  
• Since CIF/9000 is integrated with the HP-UX file system, compatibility with your backup tools such as OmniBack and Legato is no problem. (All data and security information is kept in the standard HP-UX file system.) This also delivers security consistent with and enforced by your file system, using the industry-standard POSIX Access Control Lists (ACLs) of the file system.
  
  
• By keeping file state information, it offers you high-performance caching and file sharing, allowing recoverability of sessions if a link failure occurs.
  
  
• LM Pluggable Authentication Module (PAM) allows your UNIX users to access Windows authentication services. This makes possible global user ID and password authentication across both UNIX and Windows--easing maintenance of UNIX and Windows environments.
  
  
• Since easily definable mapping between different UNIX and Windows user Ids is provided, mapping only has to be defined once; after that, mapping is automatic--allowing your system administrator to spend time on more important tasks.
  
  
• Administration and management of CIFS/9000 is very similar to HP-UX 11. You'll see the same user interfaces, nomenclature, and command syntax. The result: easier management--and less training required for new users.

Availability

HP's CIFS/9000 is a no-charge product that is available from HP software depot as of February 1, 2000 and ships as part of the March, 2000 HP-UX 11 Application Release. Beginning in March 2000, CIFS/9000 (client and server portions) is automatically ignited with HP-UX 11 on both HP 9000 servers and workstations.

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CIFS/9000: Questions and Answers

Q: When will High Availability failover scripts be available for CIFS/9000? Will these be bundled with CIFS/9000?

A: High Availability scripts for CIFS/9000 will be available shortly after the first release. They will be bundled with CIFS/9000.

Q: Is CIFS/9000 compatible with the more popular backup utilities such as OmniBack and Legato? AS/9000 was somewhat incompatible with these utilities because it stored information outside the file system.

A: Common Internet File System does not store security meta-data separately from the HP-UX Hierarchical File System (HFS) or Journaled File System (JFS) as does AS/9000, so supported HP backup utilities--including OmniBack--that work with HFS and JFS will also work with CIFS/9000.

Q: Is the server side of CIFS/9000 based on Open Source Samba?

A: Yes. HP is committed to submitting CIFS/9000 enhancements back to the Open Source community.

Q: How do I know that Windows NT security is robust enough to use NT for enterprise-wide user authentication?

A: HP is using Windows NT for user authentication on its worldwide intranet.

Q: Does CIFS/9000 allow common authentication between UNIX and Windows?

A: Yes, CIFS/9000 makes it possible to achieve common authentication of your UNIX and Windows users. The solution depends on your implementation--in other words, CIFS/9000 is not an "out-of-box" solution for common authentication.

Q: Will CIFS/9000 be made available on HP-UX 10?

A: No. The CIFS/9000 product depends on the Pluggable Authentication Module (PAM), which is available only with HP-UX 11.

Q: Does CIFS/9000 support both Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000?

A: Yes. Specifically, Windows NT 4.0 uses NTLM for user authentication; Windows 2000 will use Kerberos. CIFS/9000, by means of the Pluggable Authentication Module (PAM), supports NTLM authentication today--and will soon support Kerberos: a PAM-compatible version of Kerberos for HP-UX 11 is expected to be available in March 2000.

Q: CIFS/9000 is a no-charge product. Do I still need to place an order in order to get the software license?

A: No. However, if you want support on CIFS/9000, you must place an order for CIFS/9000 server support. CIFS/9000 client support is included in the server support.

Q: Can HP-UX 11 with CIFS/9000 interoperate with HP-UX 10.20 systems?

A: Yes, the CIFS/9000 client on HP-UX 11 systems can access files on HP-UX 10.20 systems running Samba. (Samba is an open source Windows file-serving product for UNIX that provides the same file serving functionality provided by AS/9000.)

Q: Can a CIFS/9000 client access CIFS/9000 server on HP-UX even if there are no NT systems in the network?

A: Yes. Even if there are no Windows NT systems in the network, a CIFS/9000 client can access a HP-UX CIFS/9000 server. The CIFS/9000 server must be configured as a standalone server. A CIFS/9000 client can then log onto that HP-UX CIFS/9000 server and be authenticated by the same server.

Q: Can a CIFS/9000 client and a Windows (Common Internet File System) client share the same files on a HP-UX CIFS/9000 server?

A: Yes. Since both use the Common Internet File System protocol, they can share the same file on the HP-UX CIFS/9000 server. Windows NT file access privileges--such as read-only, read/write, etc.--are mapped onto the POSIX ACLs (Access Control Lists) on the HP-UX file system.

Q: As a file access protocol, Common Internet File System supports enforced file locking. Is this fully supported in the first release of CIFS/9000?

A: The CIFS/9000 server fully supports enforced file locking. The first release of the CIFS/9000 client has no support for file-locking semantics. This will be added in a future release.

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HP's CIFS/9000-Completing the Path to Windows/UNIX Interoperability

CIFS/9000 gives HP-UX 11 the best UNIX and Windows interoperability story in the industry. CIFS/9000 gives UNIX and Windows--for the very first time--scalable, secure interoperability that is tightly integrated with the UNIX environment (not a port from Windows like Advanced Server for UNIX). This means that:

• Windows platforms can now be file servers for HP-UX 11 systems--a hot new capability! What's more, HP-UX 11 systems can now be file servers for Windows platforms, with file-serving technology that is tightly integrated with HP-UX and works with standard HP-UX 11 utilities such as OmniBack and Legato.
  
  
• HP-UX 11 can be integrated with Windows user authentication because CIFS/9000 is the first product from a major vendor to deliver UNIX-client-to-Windows-server capability. With CIFS/9000, both Windows and HP-UX 11 platforms can authenticate against Windows domain controllers, making possible common and global user authentication between UNIX and Windows platforms.
  
  
• As you know, Network File System (NFS), the most popular distributed file system, does not solve your Windows/UNIX interoperability problems. The Open Group's Distributed File System (DFS) solved some of these problems--but was too expensive and too complicated to be widely adopted in the marketplace.

Meeting the Global Interoperability Needs of the Enterprise

Today's enterprises live in a world where:

• The Internet provides instant global connectivity and information access through e-mail and Web sites.
• Trade barriers are rapidly disappearing--for example, note the rise of the European Union and NAFTA and China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO).
• Products and business activities are increasingly technology- and information-intensive.

These factors mean increased competition and globalization of enterprise activities. Product development cycles and lifecycles are being compressed. Enterprise business activities frequently span multiple time zones and geographies. With nearly all functional areas of the enterprise (including engineering and manufacturing) becoming a mix of UNIX and Windows, the need to share information easily and quickly is growing day by day.

The Common Internet File System and CIFS/9000 provide solutions to these rapidly emerging Enterprise needs:

• Common Internet File System is an enabling technology for global product development collaboration to achieve faster time to market.
• Common Internet File System provides optimal interoperability for environments with a mix of UNIX and Windows platforms.

Meeting the Interoperability Needs of E-Business
Within all e-businesses (e-commerce, Internet service providers, and application service providers) is a multi-layered architecture. The layer closest to the Internet is an infrastructure layer consisting of routers, firewalls, and load balancers. Behind this infrastructure layer is a second server layer--application servers that provide various services, such as e-mail, news, online catalogs, and the like, together with traditional Web servers that deliver HTML pages to end-user browsers over the Internet. This second layer can be a mix of UNIX, Linux, and Windows platforms, depending on the application being hosted.

Behind the layer of application servers is a layer of Web content servers. These servers provide content to the application servers, which then compose and send HTML pages through the infrastructure layer to your end user's browser. Because the application server layer is a mixture of UNIX, Linux, and Windows platforms, all accessing the Web content layer, a common, shared data access method is needed to preserve data consistency and integrity. If the various application servers use diverse data access methods--for example, if one server uses Common Internet File System and another employs NFS--there is a real possibility of a loss of data integrity.

The Common Internet File System and CIFS/9000 satisfy the need for a common data access method between application servers and Web content servers.

How CIFS/9000 Compares with AS/9000

CIFS/9000 is a follow-on product to AS/9000 (Advanced Server for UNIX), in which HP-UX is a file server to Windows platforms. However, CIFS/9000 is more complete. CIFS/9000 is a no-charge product that will be automatically ignited (installed at the factory) on every HP 9000 server beginning in March 2000.

CIFS/9000 has more capabilities than AS/9000 because it provides both a Windows server and a client for HP-UX 11 servers and workstations. Moreover, because it was developed specifically for the UNIX environment, CIFS/9000 is also more integrated with HP-UX. This is especially true in the areas of administration and management, where CIFS/9000 is very consistent with HP-UX. AS/9000, by contrast, was derived from Microsoft's Advanced Server for UNIX (ASU), which in turn was originally ported from Windows to UNIX by AT&T. As a result, AS/9000 has suffered from UNIX integration problems, especially system administration issues and incompatibility with basic system utilities such as backup tools.

Migration from AS/9000

With AS/9000, HP-UX can act as a file server to a Windows client. However, CIFS/9000 delivers greater functionality by providing both HP-UX server and client capabilities to Windows platforms. CIFS/9000 is also more integrated with HP-UX.

For end users, the migration from AS/9000 to CIFS/9000 is relatively transparent. A Windows user will see little difference between accessing an HP-UX system with AS/9000 and accessing it with CIFS/9000.

Copyright 2000