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SMB2, a complete redesign of the main remote file protocol for Windows

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Introduction

SMB (Server Message Block) is a remote file protocol commonly used by Microsoft Windows clients and servers that dates back to 1980’s. Back when it was first used, LANs speeds were typically 10Mbps or less, WAN use was very limited and there were no Wireless LANs. Network security concerns like preventing man-in-the-middle attacks were non-existent at that time. Obviously, things have changed a lot since then. SMB did evolve over time, but it did so incrementally and with great care for keeping backward compatibility. It was only with SMB2 in 2007 that we had the first major redesign.

A History of SMB and CIFS

When it was first introduced to the public, the remote file protocol was called SMB (Server Message Block). SMB was used, for instance, by Microsoft LAN Manager in 1987 and by Windows for Workgroups in 1992. Later, a draft specification was submitted to the IETF under the name Common Internet File System (CIFS). The CIFS specification is a description of the protocol as it was implemented in 1996 as part of Microsoft Windows NT 4.0. A preliminary draft of the IETF CIFS 1.0 specification was published in 1997. Later, extensions were made to address other scenarios like domains, Kerberos, shadow copy, server to server copy and SMB signing. Windows 2000 (released in 2000) included those extensions. At that time, some people went back to calling the protocol SMB once again. CIFS/SMB has also been implemented on Unix, Linux and many other operating systems (either as part of the OS or as a server suite like Samba). A few times, those communities also extended the CIFS/SMB protocol to address their own specific requirements.

One important limitation of SMB was its “chattiness” and lack of concern for network latency. It would take a series of synchronous round trips to accomplish many of the most common tasks. The protocol was not created with WAN or high-latency networks in mind and there was limited use of compounding (combining multiple commands in a single network packet) or pipelining (sending additional commands before the answer to a previous command arrives). This even led to products created to address the specific issues around SMB WAN acceleration. There were also limitations regarding the number of open files, shares and users. Due to the large number of commands and subcommands, the protocol was also difficult to extend, maintain and secure.

Introducing SMB2

The first major redesign of SMB happened with the release of SMB2 by Microsoft. SMB2 was introduced with Windows Vista in 2007 and updated with the release of Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista SP1 in 2008.

SMB2 brought a number of improvements, including but not limited to:

  • Reduced complexity, going from over 100 commands and subcommands to just 19 (see details below)
  • General mechanisms for data pipelining and credit-based flow control (see details below)
  • Request compounding, which allows multiple SMB requests to be sent as a single network request (see details below)
  • Larger reads and writes make better use of faster networks, even with high latency
  • Caching of folder and file properties, where clients keeps local copy of information on folders and files
  • Durable handles allow an SMB2 connection to transparently reconnect to the server if there is a temporary loss of network connectivity
  • Message signing improved (HMAC SHA-256 replaces MD5 as hashing algorithm) and configuration/interoperability issues simplified
  • Improved scalability for file sharing (number of users, shares and open files per server greatly increased)
  • Protocol works well with Network Address Translation (VC count is gone)
  • Extension mechanism (for instance, create context or variable offsets)
  • Support for symbolic links

It is important to highlight that, to ensure interoperability, SMB2 uses the existing SMB1 connection setup mechanisms, and then advertises that it is capable of a new version of the protocol. Because of that, if the opposite end does not support SMB2, SMB1 will be used.

The SMB2 protocol specification was published publicly by Microsoft and you can find the link at the end of this post.

Reduced Complexity

One of the ways to showcase the reduced complexity in SMB2 is to make a comparison to the commands and subcommands in the old version.

Here is the complete list of the 19 opcodes (or commands) used by SMB2 in the message exchanges between the client and the server, grouped in three categories:

  • Protocol negotiation, user authentication and share access (NEGOTIATE, SESSION_SETUP, LOGOFF, TREE_CONNECT, TREE_DISCONNECT)
  • File, directory and volume access (CANCEL, CHANGE_NOTIFY, CLOSE, CREATE, FLUSH, IOCTL, LOCK, QUERY_DIRECTORY, QUERY_INFO, READ, SET_INFO, WRITE)
  • Other (ECHO, OPLOCK_BREAK)

When you try to get a similar list for the old SMB, things get a little more complex. I tried to make a list of all commands and subcommands using only the documents linked below and came up with over 100:

  • Protocol negotiation, user authentication and share access (NEGOTIATE, SESSION_SETUP_ANDX, TRANS2_SESSION_SETUP, LOGOFF_ANDX, PROCESS_EXIT, TREE_CONNECT, TREE_CONNECT_ANDX, TREE_DISCONNECT)
  • File, directory and volume access (CHECK_DIRECTORY, CLOSE, CLOSE_PRINT_FILE, COPY, CREATE, CREATE_DIRECTORY, CREATE_NEW, CREATE_TEMPORARY, DELETE, DELETE_DIRECTORY, FIND_CLOSE, FIND_CLOSE2, FIND_UNIQUE, FLUSH, GET_PRINT_QUEUE,  IOCTL, IOCTL_SECONDARY, LOCK_AND_READ, LOCK_BYTE_RANGE, LOCKING_ANDX, MOVE, NT_CANCEL, NT_CREATE_ANDX, NT_RENAME, NT_TRANSACT, NT_TRANSACT_CREATE, NT_TRANSACT_IOCTL, NT_TRANSACT_NOTIFY_CHANGE, NT_TRANSACT_QUERY_QUOTA, NT_TRANSACT_QUERY_SECURITY_DESC, NT_TRANSACT_RENAME, NT_TRANSACT_SECONDARY, NT_TRANSACT_SET_QUOTA, NT_TRANSACT_SET_SECURITY_DESC, OPEN, OPEN_ANDX, OPEN_PRINT_FILE, QUERY_INFORMATION, QUERY_INFORMATION_DISK, QUERY_INFORMATION2, READ, READ_ANDX, READ_BULK, READ_MPX, READ_RAW, RENAME, SEARCH, SEEK, SET_INFORMATION, SET_INFORMATION2, TRANS2_CREATE_DIRECTORY, TRANS2_FIND_FIRST2, TRANS2_FIND_NEXT2, TRANS2_FIND_NOTIFY_FIRST, TRANS2_FIND_NOTIFY_NEXT, TRANS2_FSCTL , TRANS2_GET_DFS_REFERRAL, TRANS2_IOCTL2, TRANS2_OPEN2, TRANS2_QUERY_FILE_INFORMATION, TRANS2_QUERY_FS_INFORMATION, TRANS2_QUERY_PATH_INFORMATION, TRANS2_QUERY_PATH_INFORMATION, TRANS2_REPORT_DFS_INCONSISTENCY, TRANS2_SET_FILE_INFORMATION, TRANS2_SET_FS_INFORMATION, TRANS2_SET_PATH_INFORMATION, TRANSACTION, TRANSACTION_SECONDARY, TRANSACTION2, TRANSACTION2_SECONDARY, UNLOCK_BYTE_RANGE, WRITE, WRITE_AND_CLOSE, WRITE_AND_UNLOCK, WRITE_ANDX, WRITE_BULK, WRITE_BULK_DATA, WRITE_COMPLETE, WRITE_MPX, WRITE_MPX_SECONDARY, WRITE_PRINT_FILE, WRITE_RAW)
  • Other (ECHO, TRANS_CALL_NMPIPE, TRANS_MAILSLOT_WRITE, TRANS_PEEK_NMPIPE, TRANS_QUERY_NMPIPE_INFO, TRANS_QUERY_NMPIPE_STATE, TRANS_RAW_READ_NMPIPE, TRANS_RAW_WRITE_NMPIPE, TRANS_READ_NMPIPE, TRANS_SET_NMPIPE_STATE, TRANS_TRANSACT_NMPIPE, TRANS_WAIT_NMPIPE, TRANS_WRITE_NMPIPE)

I make no claim that the list above for SMB is exact or complete, but it does make a point. As an interesting exercise, check the lists above to verify that, while SMB2 has a single WRITE operation, there are 14 distinct WRITE operations in the old protocol.

SMB2 also requires TCP as a transport. SMB2 no longer supports NetBIOS over IPX, NetBIOS over UDP or NetBEUI (as SMB version 1 did).

Pipelining

A key improvement in SMB2 is the way it makes it easy for clients to send a number of outstanding requests to a server. This allows the client to build a pipeline of requests instead of waiting for a response before sending the next request.  This is especially relevant when using a high latency network.

SMB2 uses a credit based flow control, which allows the server to control a client’s behavior. The server will start with a small number of credits and automatically scale up as needed. With this, the protocol can keep more data “in flight” and better utilize the available bandwidth.

This is key to make a large transfer go from hours (in SMB) to minutes (in SMB2) in a “long and fat pipe” (high bandwidth, high latency network).

For an example of how pipelining in SMB2 can improve performance, check this other blog post: https://blogs.technet.com/josebda/archive/2008/11/11/file-server-performance-improvements-with-the-smb2-protocol-in-windows-server-2008.aspx

Compounding

When you look at the command set for the new SMB2 protocol, you notice that they are all simple operations. The old SMB1 protocol had some complex commands and subcommands that combined a set of simple operations as required in specific scenarios.

One of the important changes in SMB2 is the ability to send an arbitrary set of commands in a single request (single network round trip). This is called compounding and it can be use to mimic the old complex operations in SMB1 without the added complexity of a larger command set.

For instance, an old SMB1 RENAME command can be replaced by a single request in SMB2 that combines three commands: CREATE (which can create a new file or open an existing file), SET_INFO and CLOSE. The same can be done for many other complex SMB1 commands and subcommands like LOCK_AND_READ and WRITE_AND_UNLOCK.

This compounding ability in SMB2 is very flexible and the chain of commands can be unrelated (executed separately, potentially in parallel) or related (executed in sequence, with the output of one command available to the next). The responses can also be compounded or sent separately.

This new compounding feature in SMB2 can be used to perform a specific task in less time due to the reduced number of network round trips.

Conclusion

I hope this post has helped you understand some of the important improvements in SMB2, particularly in regards to reduced complexity, pipelining and compounding.

Reference

Below is a list of important links that document SMB2, SMB and CIFS, including the latest protocol specifications published by Microsoft:

[MS-SMB2]: Server Message Block (SMB) Version 2.0 Protocol Specification
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc212614.aspx

[MS-SMB]: Server Message Block (SMB) Protocol Specification
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc212363.aspx

[MS-CIFS]: Common Internet File System (CIFS) Protocol Specification
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee442092(PROT.13).aspx

Microsoft Protocol Programs
https://www.microsoft.com/protocols

Here's also a few publicly available presentations on SMB2:

SNIA Tutorial on SMB2 by Jim Pinkerton
https://www.snia.org/images/tutorial_docs/Networking/JimPinkerton-SMB2_Big_Improvements_Remote_FS_Protocol-v3.pdf

SDC Presentation on SMB 2.1 by David Kruse
https://www.snia.org/events/storage-developer2009/presentations/tuesday/DavidKruse_SMBv21.pdf

Comments

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    January 01, 2003
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  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    I recently talked to a customer that was surprised to hear that their Windows 7 clients were not using
  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    SMB (Server Message Block) is a remote file protocol commonly used by Microsoft Windows clients and servers
  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Introduction The SQL CAT team has posted a blog last year about the "Top 10 hidden gems in SQL Server
  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    I recently talked to a customer that was surprised to hear that their Windows 7 clients were not using
  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Introduction The File Server team often talks to customers about file server migration and file server
  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    I recently talked to a customer that was surprised to hear that their Windows 7 clients were not using
  • Anonymous
    April 09, 2014
    Note: This blog post is a Windows Server 2012 R2 update on a previous version focused on Windows Server
  • Anonymous
    July 11, 2016
    How would you set up a socket in python to be able to send and authenticate via smb2?