Does VAST Support File Names with Special Characters?

VAST, by default, uses a "lowest common denominator" (LCD) approach to file names to ensure they are legal across all supported protocols.

For example, the following characters are legal in NFS filenames, but not in SMB:

“ \  : | < > * ?

Additionally, the following character sequences are legal in S3 but illegal with NFS

// /../

For Views that only have a single protocol enabled, use of the above characters is desireable and 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. 

NOTE: If a multi-protocol View is created using a View Policy configured with Native Protocol Limit, files and objects created using characters that are illegal for a particular protocol will not be visible under that protocol.

To create a new policy using Native Protocol Limit via VCLI, use the login to the CNODE on which VMS is running.  Launch the VCLI and use the option --allowed-characters NPL in the viewpolicy createcommand:

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

To modify an existing policy with LCD enabled via VCLI:

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

From the VMS GUI this was performed under the Advanced Tab of the View Policy Create or Modify pages:

 Note for S3 Security Flavor:

If using the S3 Security Flavor and the ability to use object names with // or  /../ you must also enable S3 Special Character Support under the S3 tab of the View Policy: