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The SMB protocol is a network file sharing protocol, and as implemented in Microsoft Windows is known as the Microsoft SMB protocol. The set of message packets that defines a particular version of the protocol is called a dialect. The Common Internet File System (CIFS) protocol is a dialect of SMB. Both SMB and CIFS are also available on virtual machines, and several versions of UNIX and Windows operating systems.
The Microsoft SMB protocol is a client-server implementation and consists of a set of data packets, each containing a request sent by the client or a response sent by the server. These packets can be broadly classified as follows:
For more detailed information about the SMB protocol, see the Microsoft TechNet article Microsoft SMB Protocol and CIFS Protocol Overview.
Table 1 lists different versions of SMB supported by Windows operating systems. Table 2 lists SMB features supported by PowerScale OneFS versions.
SMB 1.0 (or SMB1) | Windows XP Windows Server 2003 Windows Server 2003 R2 |
SMB 2.0 (or SMB2) | Windows Vista (SP1 or later) Windows Server 2008 |
SMB 2.1 (or SMB2.1) | Windows Server 2008 R2 |
SMB 3.0 (or SMB3) | Windows 8 Windows Server 2012 |
SMB 3.02 (or SMB3) | Windows 8.1 Windows Server 2012R2 |
SMB 3.1.1 (or SMB3) | Windows Server 2016 |
SMB feature | Section in this document | |
SMB multichannel | PowerScale OneFS 7.1.1 and later | |
SMB symbolic links | PowerScale OneFS 7.1.1 and later | |
SMB server-side copy | PowerScale OneFS 8.0 and later | |
SMB file filtering | PowerScale OneFS 8.0 and later | |
SMB encryption | PowerScale OneFS 8.1.1 and later |