Admin Alert: Three Steps to Mapping iSeries Data to a Windows Network Drive

There’s only one problem with using iSeries NetServer to deliver AS/400 Integrated File System (AS/400 IFS) file shares as networked Windows PC drives. The technique is so commonly used that it’s getting hard to find an easy primer for setting it up. As a service to the i5 community, this column focuses on setting up a NetServer environment from scratch on your i5, iSeries, or AS/400 partition.

What is iSeries NetServer?

iSeries NetServer (also called AS/400 NetServer in earlier versions) is an i5/OS and OS/400 server that enables Windows clients to access AS/400 IFS folders as mapped network drives. With an active NetServer running on your partition, Windows PCs can use Microsoft‘s standard Server Message Block (SMB) protocol to map a network drive on the desktop directly to a file share residing in the partition’s AS/400 IFS. The Windows PC doesn’t need any special software to create this network drive, and users can easily map a network drive to a NetServer file share in the same way that they would map a network drive to a file share residing on any other Windows server.

Anatomy of an Example

To show you how easy it is to set up NetServer, I’ll run through a quick example that performs the following three steps that result in a fully functioning NetServer configuration. By following this example, you’ll be able to configure NetServer to allow Windows PCs to map a network drive to a file share that points to the /QIBM folder in your partition’s AS/400 IFS (you can change it to whatever AS/400 IFS folder you want later on). Our three example steps for setting up a NetServer mapped drive are the following:

1. Configure and start the iSeries NetServer server. For this example, I’ll be configuring NetServer on an i5 partition called Part1.
2. Designate an AS/400 IFS folder as a networked file share. In this case, I’ll configure the /QIBM folder off the root (/) of the AS/400 IFS as a Windows file share.
3. Configure your Windows PC to map the share to a network drive.

Here’s how it works.

Setting Up NetServer to Run on Your Partition

If you haven’t set up NetServer yet, you will need to gather the following data for your configuration:

• The name of the Windows domain that you want to associate your NetServer implementation with.
• The name that you want Windows PCs in your network to associate with your NetServer server. This should not be the same name as your i5 server but it should be similar enough so that users can identify the partition that it belongs to. IBM’s default naming convention for NetServer servers is to attach a ‘Q’ to the partition name, such that if you have NetServer running on a partition named ‘Part1’, it would usually be called ‘QPart1’.
• Whether or not you want to use guest support. If you select ‘Yes’, users can access your file shares without needing to sign onto your i5 box. Instead, you configure NetServer to use a designated guest user profile and all NetServer sessions will run under that guest user name and assume the same authority as that user. If you choose this option, be careful not to select a guest user profile that has any special authorities associated with it, as selecting this option basically creates a password-free sign-on for your guests.
• The IP address for your network’s primary and secondary Windows Internet Service servers (WINS). Windows clients will use these servers to locate your iSeries NetServer server.
• The authentication method (sign-on) that you are going to use for your file server connections. You can specify that NetServer should either support regular encrypted passwords (the default), Kerberos authentication, or a combination of both types of authentication. If you configure NetServer for both authentication techniques, it will automatically accept encrypted passwords for those clients that don’t support Kerberos or who are not configured for Kerberos support.
• Whether or not you want the iSeries NetServer to automatically start whenever TCP/IP is started. If you always want the server to be available after an IPL or a full system backup, be sure to use this option. Otherwise, you will have to manually start and stop the iSeries NetServer server yourself.

For most other NetServer parameters, you can use the default values unless there is a specific problem with your server setup.

Inside the iSeries Navigator (OpsNav) program that comes with iSeries Access for Windows, NetServer can either be configured manually or it can be set up through a Configuration Wizard. To use the Wizard to configure NetServer in OpsNav, perform the following steps.

1. Open the Network–>Servers–>TCP/IP node under the i5 partition that you want to configure NetServer to run in. In the right-hand panel, you will see a list of all the available TCP/IP servers on this partition.
2. To automatically configure or reconfigure NetServer, right-click on the iSeries NetServer entry and select Configuration off the pop-up menu that appears. This will bring up the iSeries NetServer Configuration Wizard.
3. Follow the prompts on the Wizard and enter the configuration data gathered above. For most of the other prompts, you can generally use the defaults unless there is a problem or a configuration that is specific to your local environment. You can also use the Configuration Wizard to reconfigure or change specific parameters in your NetServer setup.
4. Once you have configured all parameters, click the Finish button on the final screen. This will save your new NetServer parameters but these parameters will not become active until the NetServer server is stopped and restarted again. If the server is currently running, OpsNav will ask you whether you want to restart NetServer after saving the parameters. Select Yes or No depending on your situation.

At this point, your iSeries NetServer server is active on your system.

Setting up a NetServer File Share

Although there are two ways to set up a NetServer share, I prefer to set it up by browsing the Integrated File System node in OpsNav and then designating my target AS/400 IFS folder as a share by using the Sharing option on that folder. To browse the AS/400 IFS in OpsNav, open the File Systems–>Integrated File Systems node under your target partition. Here you can open several of the file systems that are available under i5/OS, but the QIBM folder that I’m looking for is found under the Root (/) of the AS/400 IFS. To open the Root (/) folder, expand the Root node under OpsNav’s Integrated File System folder. Once open, right-click on the QIBM entry under the Root and select Sharing, New Share from the pop-up menu that appears. This will bring up the iSeries NetServer File Share Properties panel.

Under the General tab of the iSeries NetServer File Share Properties panel, you will see input boxes for a Share name (which defaults to the name of the folder being shared), a Description box, a drop-down for specifying user access rights (labeled Access), and a radio button/input box specifying how many users will be able to access this share at one time (Maximum number of users). You can label the Share name with any name that you want but if you want to hide the share from general network browsing, you should start the Share name with the dollar sign symbol ($). For user access, you can specify either Read only access or Read/Write access, which determines whether users can update files in this folder. For the Maximum number of users, IBM defaults this value to the No maximum radio button but you can set a limit on the number of people who can use this share at the same time; that limit can be set anywhere from zero users (0) up to a ridiculously high maximum of 2147483647 users.

If you’re sharing one of your i5/OS libraries, you may also want to click on the Text Conversion tab off the iSeries NetServer File Properties Share panel. On this screen you can specify parameters for EBCDIC-to-ASCII text conversion so that PC users can view the contents of i5/OS libraries.

Once you’ve entered all the parameters for your AS/400 IFS file share, click on OK from the Share Properties panel and this share will now be available for Windows users through the NetServer server.

Mapping a Windows Drive to Your NetServer Share

The final step is accessing your AS/400 IFS file share as a network drive from a Windows desktop. You can set up this drive the same way that you set up any other Windows network drive. From a Windows desktop, you first open My Computer and click on Tools–>, Map Network Drive from the Windows toolbar. This brings up the Map Network Drive window, which will ask you to define the drive letter that you want to assign to your drive connection and the network folder that the drive will point to. You can also browse the network and assign the folder to your drive letter by clicking on the Browse button. For our example, I would either browse through the network to find my QIBM share on QPart1 (my NetServer name) or I would just designate that the drive letter should point to the QPART1QIBM file share. If I want to make this drive mapping permanent on the desktop, I would click on the Reconnect at logon check box in the window. Once I have designated all my parameters, I would click on the Finish button and then I would have a network drive mapped to my i5 box, courtesy of iSeries NetServer.

And If There’s Problems. . .

While this basic NetServer configuration is simple, sometimes you will run into problems for a variety of reasons. If you’re having trouble with your NetServer configuration, IBM offers a nice Troubleshoot iSeries NetServer Web site at the iSeries Information Center for i5/OS V5R3. You will be able to find answers for common NetServer connectivity problems there.

About Our Testing Environment

All configurations described in this article were tested on an i5 box running i5/OS V5R3. The iSeries Navigator configuration (OpsNav) was tested by using the OpsNav version that comes with iSeries Access for Windows V5R3M0, and the mapped drive was tested on a Windows 2000 PC. Most of the referenced configurations are also available in earlier versions of the i5/OS and OS/400 operating systems as well as in earlier versions of IBM’s OpsNav program, so the configurations should be usable in prior releases. However, you may notice minor variations in pre-V5R3 copies of these features. These differences may be due to incremental command improvements that have occurred from release to release.

RELATED STORIES

iSeries Information Center for i5/OS V5R3

Troubleshoot iSeries NetServer Web site, IBM