From the NetApp edition of October 29, 2026
UC Berkeley EECS: NetApp CIFS home and project shares unavailable for about seven weeks during migration to Campus Active Directory
UC Berkeley EECS Instructional & Research Information Systems (IRIS) · Higher education: departmental research and instructional IT · Berkeley, California, USA
- Publisher
- UC Berkeley EECS IRIS
- Original publication
- Incident posted August 14, 2026; updates October 2 and October 7, 2026; resolved 2026-10-07
- Source retrieved
- 2026-10-30
- Event date
- 2026-10-07
What happened
While migrating its NetApp fileservers from the sunsetting EECS Active Directory to the Campus Active Directory, EECS hit "unexpected issues" and CIFS (Windows/macOS) home and project shares were unavailable from the August 14 posting until CIFS was restored around October 1; NFS shares were unaffected. Users whose EECS and CalNet usernames differed needed further work, Windows groups had to be re-created in the Campus domain, and folder-level group permissions had to be reset. The incident was marked resolved on 2026-10-07.
Why it matters
Directly relevant to universities, state agencies and districts consolidating identity directories: storage access depends on identity mappings, and SMB access can fail for weeks. Any AI data-readiness or catalogue project relying on ACLs inherits this dependency.
Evidence and measured results
Operator-published incident log with dated updates; no root-cause detail, user counts or vendor attribution of fault.
Limitations and uncertainty
Single departmental incident; cause not specified and not attributed to NetApp product defects.
Put this evidence to work
Lighthouse Advisory interpretation, grounded in this source. Enriched 2026-10-30; this does not change the original publication date. Each role follows the same checklist so takeaways compare across sources.
Sales
Role takeaway
- Customer problem
- Directory consolidation can break file-share access for weeks.
- Stakeholders
- Campus identity team
- Departmental IT
- Storage administrators
- Research faculty and students
- Discovery questions
- Are you consolidating AD domains in the next year?
- How many SMB ACLs reference domain-specific groups?
- Do usernames match across directories?
- Value hypothesis
- A pre-migration ACL and identity mapping review may reduce outage duration risk.
- Potential engagement
- Migration-readiness assessment for ONTAP SMB shares.
- Unsupported claims
- That NetApp caused the outage
- Any fixed outage-duration guarantee
- AI relevance beyond ACL dependency
Pre-sales engineering
Role takeaway
- Fit
- Multiprotocol ONTAP estates undergoing AD changes.
- Architecture and integration
- ONTAP CIFS servers joined to campus AD; NFS unaffected; name mapping for mismatched usernames.
- Prerequisites
- Share and ACL inventory
- Group mapping plan
- Test SVM
- Constraints
- Username mismatches
- Folder-level group permissions
- Campus-wide identity policies
- Security
- Avoid over-permissioning during group re-creation; snapshot ACLs before change.
- Proof of value
- Pilot migration on test shares
- Verify access for mismatched usernames
- Compare ACLs before and after
Delivery
Role takeaway
- Work
- Staged AD migration of NAS SMB services.
- Dependencies
- Campus identity team
- Departmental IT
- User communications
- Ownership
- Departmental IT with campus identity team.
- Skills and adoption
- Admins skilled in ONTAP CIFS and AD name mapping.
- Governance checkpoints
- Pre-migration readiness sign-off
- Cutover go/no-go
- Post-migration ACL audit
- Acceptance criteria
- Proposed: SMB outage below agreed maximum
- Proposed: sampled shares accessible to correct groups
- Proposed: all mismatched usernames mapped
- Risks
- Prolonged outage
- Permission drift
- User support load
Implementation considerations
Lighthouse Advisory interpretation across the operating dimensions a public-sector buyer must settle before this evidence becomes a design. Each note answers the question under its heading for this specific source.
Architecture and integration
What must connect, and where does the AI sit in the workflow?
Multiprotocol NAS: NFS and SMB depend on different identity paths; directory migration touched SMB only. Username mismatches between directories require mapping configuration.
Governance
Who approves, reviews and stays accountable for outcomes?
Identity consolidation projects should treat file-share ACL migration as a first-class workstream with rollback criteria.
Security and privacy
What data, permissions and controls need testing?
Re-creating Windows groups and resetting ownership risks over- or under-permissioning research and student data during transition.
Accessibility and workforce
Who is affected, and what skills or accommodations follow?
Staff skills in storage, identity and security operations are the main workforce dependency; no accessibility findings in the source.
Procurement
What should contracts, pricing and exit terms secure?
Buy against documented, testable requirements and acceptance tests rather than vendor maxima.
Operating model
Which teams own the service once it runs?
Ongoing operations sit with central or departmental IT storage teams; no change in operating model is reported by the source.
Publication history
- 2026-10-29NetApp · Issue 016 resources
Stable resource ID: uc-berkeley-eecs-netapp-cifs-outage-ad-migration-20260814