Understanding home directories on the storage system

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 Managing home directories.

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 directory. The home directory for jdoe corresponds to the /vol/vol1/enghome/jdoe directory, and the home directory for jsmith corresponds to the /vol/vol2/mktghome/jsmith directory.

Differences between a home directory and other shares

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

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