Recommended approach when adding SMB-Compatible Storage

For production environments, we recommend using OS-level SMB/CIFS mounts instead of application-level connections.

This approach provides:

  • Better stability under high load
  • Improved file descriptor management
  • Enhanced performance
  • More reliable connections

Many of our enterprise customers have already migrated to OS-level SMB mounts and are experiencing significantly improved stability and performance in their production environments.

Why We Recommend This Approach

Through extensive testing and production deployments, we've identified challenges with the 3rd-party SMB client library that we are using when handling:

  • High concurrent workloads: connection drops intermittently
  • Large file descriptor usage: the SMB client library may open excessive file descriptors, leading to system resource exhaustion
  • Connection stability: Network interruptions can cause SMB connections created from the SMB client library to become stale or unresponsive

Technical Background

OS-level mounts leverage the operating system's native SMB/CIFS client, which:

  • Handles connection pooling automatically: The OS manages connection lifecycle and recovery
  • Manages file descriptors more efficiently: Kernel-level implementation prevents descriptor leaks
  • Provides better fault tolerance: Built-in retry logic and connection recovery
  • Reduces application-level overhead: Direct kernel I/O without library abstraction layers

This configuration has been validated across multiple production deployments with varying workloads and is now our recommended best practice for enterprise installations.

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