[Samba] The Big Plunge

[Andrew Bartlett]

On Thu, 2003-02-20 at 02:44, Sorisio,Chris wrote:
> This is promising news, but after reading through various large chunks of
> documentation last night, I have a few more worries.
> 
> 1.  We have an MS Exchange 5.5 server in place that we will not be able to
> phase out this cycle.  Hopefully by 2006...
>
> 2.  We have a handful of remote branch offices.  These offices currently
> reside in their own NT domains with WAN connections back to the main office.
> All their e-mail and Internet access is handled through the main office via
> the WAN.
> 
> Questions:
> 
> 1.  Does MS Exchange 5.5 play nice with a Samba PDC?  We use (cough) Outlook
> on the desktop, which is something else we will not be able to phase out
> this cycle, and the MAPI interface.  Exchange needs to auth users against
> the PDC.

I don't have any experience on this, and this certainly will be the most
difficult of the issues you will face.  I hope others might be able to
provide some more info.  
 
> 2.  If I collapse all the users into a single NT domain and turn the remote
> branch office PDCs into Samba BDCs with a Samba PDC at the main office (some
> documentation has been written on how to do this, anyone actually doing it?)
> would that work?

This should work fine.  Use LDAP to achieve the replication, as your
machines will change their passwords on the BDC, and get rather confused
if this doesn't transfer to all the other DCs.

> 3.  Is Samba 3.0 stable enough to consider using in production?  Six months
> from now, is it going to be "officially" production-ready?  (I know, I know
> - "when it's ready." :) )

I use Samba HEAD in production.  I've found it to be very stable - pick
up alpha22 when it's released (shortly, we hope).  The hope is certainly
to have 3.0 kicked out the door in the next few months - development has
certainly moved from 'new features' into 'stability' over the last few
months.

> Thanks to everyone who has given feedback, I greatly appreciate it.

Good luck with your deployment, and do tell us how it goes, or what
problems you have.  

Andrew Bartlett

-- 
Andrew Bartlett                                 abartlet at pcug.org.au
Manager, Authentication Subsystems, Samba Team  abartlet at samba.org
Student Network Administrator, Hawker College   abartlet at hawkerc.net
http://samba.org     http://build.samba.org     http://hawkerc.net
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