Understanding home directories on the filer

About home directories

You can create user home directories on the filer and configure Data ONTAP to automatically offer each user a home directory share. The share is called the home share. From the CIFS client, the home share works the same way as any other share to which the user can connect.

Each user can connect only to his or her home share, not home shares for other users.

How Data ONTAP matches users to directories

Data ONTAP offers the share to the user with a matching name. The user name for matching can be a Windows user name, a domain name followed by a Windows user name, or a UNIX user name. For more information about mapping users to directories, see How Data ONTAP matches a directory with a user.

Home directory names are not case-sensitive.

Where Data ONTAP searches for the home directories

When Data ONTAP tries to locate the directories named after the users, it searches only the paths that you specify. These paths are called home directory paths. They can exist in different volumes.

Example

If you specify /vol/vol1/enghome and /vol/vol2/mktghome as the home directory paths, Data ONTAP searches these paths to locate user home directories. If you create a directory for jdoe in the /vol/vol1/enghome path and a directory for jsmith in the /vol/vol2/mktghome path, both users are offered a home share. The home share for jdoe corresponds to the /vol/vol1/enghome/jdoe directory, and the home share for jsmith corresponds to the /vol/vol2/mktghome/jsmith directory.

Differences between a home share and other shares

The following differences exist between a home share and other shares:

You cannot change the share-level ACL and the comment for a home share.
The cifs shares command does not display the home shares.
The format of specifying the home share using the Universal Naming Convention (UNC) is sometimes different from that for specifying other shares. For more information about UNC, see Accessing home directories.