While I was playing with my shiny, new HP StoreOnce VSA in my lab, I noticed a curious behavior. I created a NAS share for some tests with Veeam Backup & Replication. Creating a new share is nothing fancy. You can create a share in two ways:

• using the GUI, or
• using the CLI

So I created a new share:

[caption id=“attachment_2298” align=“alignnone” width=“580”] Patrick Terlisten/ www.vcloudnine.de/ Creative Commons CC0[/caption]

Nothing special, as you can see. I opened up a Explorer, typed in the IP address of my StoreOnce VSA and… saw no share.

[caption id=“attachment_2299” align=“alignnone” width=“625”] Patrick Terlisten/ www.vcloudnine.de/ Creative Commons CC0[/caption]

I repeated this process a couple of times, always with the same result. Then I went to the CLI and checked the newly created share:

# nas show share share0

ID 0 Protocol CIFS Name veeam Network Name \veeam Description Share for Veeam B&R Created On 11:35 2015/05/27 Modified On 11:35 2015/05/27 Status Online Health OK Replication Role Non Replicating Replication Status Non Replicating Replication Health Information User Bytes 0 Disk Bytes 380 Dedupe Ratio 0.0 Files 0 Directories 1 Read-only No Encryption Enabled No Deduplication Enabled Yes Share Version 2 Authentication None Physical Data Size Quota (No Quota) Logical Data Size Quota (No Quota)

Command Successful

So far, so good. I removed the share and tried to create the share using the CLI:

# nas create share set1 share0 proto cifs name “veeam” desc “B&R”

Command Failed -

The command failed, no share was created. I verified the syntax, but the syntax of the command was correct. I started to simplify the command and removed the description.

# nas create share set1 share0 proto cifs name “veeam”

Command Successful

nas show share share0

ID 0 Protocol CIFS Name veeam Network Name \veeam Description HP StoreOnce Share 1 Created On 11:43 2015/05/27 Modified On 11:43 2015/05/27 Status Starting Health Information Replication Role Non Replicating Replication Status Non Replicating Replication Health Information User Bytes 0 Disk Bytes 380 Dedupe Ratio 0.0 Files 0 Directories 1 Read-only No Encryption Enabled No Deduplication Enabled Yes Share Version 2 Authentication None Physical Data Size Quota (No Quota) Logical Data Size Quota (No Quota)

Command Successful

The share was added with the default description. I removed the share and tried it again with my description. The command failed again. After removing the ampersand (&) from the description, the share could be added. I tried the same from the GUI. Using the GUI, a share with a ampersand (&) in the description field could be added, but it wasn’t accessible. Even if I removed the ampersand (&) from the share description. I had to remove and re-create the share with a valid description. Unfortunately the GUI allows you to create the share, even if the CLI command fails with the same settings. The GUI also doesn’t allow you to create the share with an empty description.

At this point, I can’t say if this is a bug or a known behaviour. I’m in contact with HP to clarify this. But you should avoid the usage of special characters in the NAS share description.

Today, I got an e-mail from the HP StoreOnce Engineering. They informed me, that it’s not only the ampersand (&) you should avoid. You should avoid a set of special characters

• `
• *
• &
• %
• multiple space in a row

These characters can cause minor issues with Windows tools, like the Explorer. As a result, these special characters were banned in the latest 3.12.x CIFS server code. However this ban was not messaged in the GUI. As a fix, this ban will be lifted from 3.12.2 software to allow the use of the above mentioned special characters.