The Spotlight service, available only for macOS machines, allows you to search files on the attached share based on name, metadata, and size. The Scale Logic NX2/ZX creates an index and that index is being used by the client's machine. Bear in mind that no local copy of an index on the client's side is being created. Thus, each new user does not have to generate an index for files once the Spotlight service in Scale Logic NX2/ZX has been enabled. The support for Spotlight service has to be enabled. The SMB service has to be restarted after enabling Spotlight. This option is available after enabling SMB for a given share.

The Spotlight's service database and index are updated during an upload or modification of data on datasets. If the pool that was currently used is exported, or could not be used due to the lack of space, the last imported or created pool will be used for the Spotlight service. The index is also placed on the pool. For example:

  • Pool-0 is created, Spotlight is enabled and pool-0 database is used.
  • Pool-1 is created, Spotlight is enabled and still database from pool-0 is used.
  • Pool-0 is exported and the database from pool-1 is used.
  • Pool-0 is imported and the database from pool-1 is used.

Note: Once the service has been enabled, a dataset called _spotlight-db-dataset will be added.



Go to Storage Settings -> Scroll way to the botom and turn on Spotlight Globally.  In a ZX cluster this turns Spotlight on for both nodes so no need to do this on the 2nd node.


After turning it on it automatically creates a file system for the Spotlight database and names it "_spotlight-db-dataset" 

To enable the Spotlight DB for a share go to the dataset containing the share, and click options for the share and choose "Protocols" 


Turn on Spotlight for the share level



Do this not during working hours as SMB has to restart - kicking connections from the NAS is likely! 



mdutil is a utility on the Mac for working with Spotlight.  You can check the status of the SMB share


admin@mac1-Mac-Pro-2019 ~ % mdutil -s /Volumes/zx_nas1 
/System/Volumes/Data/Volumes/zx_nas1:
    Server search enabled.