The storage server (or cluster) stores metadata about the files, directories, migration paths, CIFS shares, NFS exports, user names, group names, log entries, mount points and so on for the virtual servers, file systems, and namespaces served by the server/cluster.
When interacting with another network device, the metadata transmitted to or received by the storage server/cluster must use a character encoding supported by the other network device. Typically, clients/devices using the SMB/SMB2 protocol (Windows) encode data in the UCS-2 character encoding, and clients/devices that use the NFS protocol encode data in the UTF-8 character encoding.
When using the FTP protocol to communicate with clients/devices, the storage server/cluster supports the UTF-8 character encoding for user names, passwords, and file/directory names.