Does VAST Support File Names with Special Characters?

VAST, by default uses a "lowest common denominator" (LCD) approach to file names so that they are legal in all supported protocols.  However, some customers use characters that may be legal in NFS but not so in SMB, such as these characters:

“ \ / : | < > * ?

VAST does indeed support these characters for the protocols in which they are legal.  In order to make use of this feature, you must enable Native Protocol Limit for a particular view policy.  In VAST versions 3.0.x and 3.4.x these settings are available in the GUI, however, in 3.2.x it was hidden and only available via the Vast CLI (VCLI).

NOTE: Once files with special characters are used in this way, if a view policy is added later that includes other protocols, these files may not be accessible via those protocols.

To create a new policy with LCD disabled, login to the CNODE on which VMS is running.  Launch the VCLI and use the option --allowed-characters in the viewpolicy create command to set NPL:

vcli: admin> viewpolicy create --name gabe --flavor NFS --allowed-characters NPL

To modify an existing policy with LCD enabled, login to the CNODE on which VMS is running.

1) You must first obtain the policy's ID number:

vcli: admin> viewpolicy list

+----+--------------+----------+--------+-------------------+
| ID | Name | Cluster | Flavor | Use-auth-provider |
+----+--------------+----------+--------+-------------------+
| 1 | Main | KFS-BETA | SMB | No |
| 3 | nfs_only | KFS-BETA | NFS | Yes |
+----+--------------+----------+--------+-------------------

2) Then use the --allowed-characters option in the viewpolicy modify command to set NPL.  In the example above, here is how you would modify the nfs_only policy:

vcli: admin> viewpolicy modify --id 3 --allowed-characters NPL

Beginning in 3.0.x, and 3.4.x, this setting is also available in the GUI in the View Policy pane.  You can either add like so:

or modify an existing policy: