NAS persistent mappings

[isom67]

Although I have a very good understanding of how NAS/SAN environments work I've been trying to figure out how best to approach this problem.

What I'm trying to do is figure out how to make a server (windows 2k) map a drive letter to a NAS appliance share(not yet configured but will probably be a Windows Storage Server NAS). I understand that I can do persistent mappings during user login or that I can use the AUTOEXEC.BAT capability of windows 2k, but is there a better way of doing it? Third party app (ie NAS client etc) or windows feature/service I'm not aware of.

In effect what I want is a network drive to be available to application services on or shortly after bootup but without requiring a user logon.

Having the network map appear as a logical local volume on user login would be a bonus.

All suggestions welcome.
Brian.

 

[IPSUpland]

Your application will need to address the device using UNC paths ie: \\servername\sharename. In this way, the NAS device will be available. There is no way to have a machine see a remote drive as a drive letter until a user login has occured. You will also need to make sure that the system account can use the remote drives. If you use a Windows based NAS device, this should not be a problem so long as both machines belong to the same Domain.



Eric

 

[isom67]

Eric,

Yeah, I knew about the UNC method but was hoping that there was possibly a way of doing it as a network map before login. NetApps have a nice piece of software that installs on client systems as a Virtual Disk Driver allowing the remote NAS volume to be seen and managed via LDM. I was hoping that there was an equivalent non-proprietary tool that could be used.

Anyway, thanks for your help.
Brian.