Enabling remote logging from a NetApp FAS without NFS or CIFS license

I recently needed to configure remote logging on a NetApp FAS so that it would send logs to a system running syslog-ng.  Typically, you would mount the filer’s /etc directory via NFS, edit syslog.conf, and be on your way.  Unfortunately, this filer was only licensed for iSCSI and FC, not NFS or CIFS.

Luckily, it turns out that you can still mount the share (\\filer\etc$) via CIFS.

First, login to the filer and create a user in the administrators group:

useradmin user add unixguy -g administrators

Then connect to the share for /etc:

Connect with the credentials you provided above.  Note that the account will exist on the filer (eg, filer\unixguy).

Once connected, you can edit the hosts file to have an entry for your syslog server.  Then edit syslog.conf.sample, save as syslog.conf.  I used WordPad rather than Notepad so that the CR/LF would be handled properly.  The filer will notice the file change and the syslog service will restart on its own.