Samba scalability?

[Kevin Colby]

Shawn Wright wrote:
> 
> [...] at times I find the volume of patches from RedHat to rival M$,
> and I don't always have time to investigate patches right away.

True, but MS tends to simply not fix the issues, hence fewer patches.
I'd take any number of patches over not being able to get a fix.

> 1. Lack of ACL support

This is a big issue for us too.  Without full ACLs per file, we
simply cannot replace certain NT systems, and I haven't seen much
for Linux ACLs yet.  Of course, this is a Linux shortcoming, not
a Samba issue.

> 2. Quota support

Quotas are reportedly working just fine.  However, the quota
setup and analysis of usage is up to the OS tools.

> 3. Backups - We currently use BackupExec 6.5 on an NT server
> to backup all servers. Are there any issues relating to backups
> using samba?

I think there are issues related to BackupExec + Samba.
BackupExec, unlike any serious backup system, is only capable
of tracking file changes via the DOS archive bit.  Thus, backup
of a *nix system via Samba may not be able to do incrementals.
We have tried these products together in the past without much
success, and will soon be dropping BackupExec entirely anyway.
Anyone had much success with this?

> For now, I need samba/linux to emulate an NT member server
> as closely as possible...

With winbind now, this is pretty good.  The biggest shortcoming
is the lack of ACL support in many *nix OSes currently.

	- Kevin Colby
	  kevinc at grainsystems.com