Where Samba has come from and where it might be going

[Andrew Bartlett]

On Mon, 2014-06-30 at 08:06 -0700, Richard Sharpe wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 24, 2014 at 9:54 AM, John Terpstra
> <john.terpstra.samba at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I urge all of us to enthusiastically enable broad adoption of Samba into
> > the cloud environment -
> 
> So, what does it mean to "enable broad adoption"? It sounds nice, but
> that wont get us anywhere, I suspect.
> 
> I can see several possibilities, and surely I have missed some or many:
> 
> 1. Simple VFS modules to allow Samba to store files on S3 or Google's cloud etc.
> 
> 2. More complete VFS modules that provide something like CTDB but
> optimized for higher latency WAN-like situations. This would allow
> those with geographically distributed environments to make better use
> of the "cloud" and is something I am intimately familiar with.

We certainly get requests for that often enough. 

> 3. Allowing Samba to function in OpenStack.

I read Simo's slide deck from SambaXP, and agree, those really are
interesting opportunities.  Without stretching myself too thin, I'm
hoping to have more to do with OpenStack and samba stuff.

http://sambaxp.org/fileadmin/user_upload/SambaXP2014-DATA/thu/Simo_Sorce-openstackandsamba.pdf

> 4. ...
> 
> Now, I suspect that we are going to need to understand what each of
> these requires and then make the appropriate changes or find people to
> make the appropriate changes ...
> 
> Also, I think there will always be two aspects to this:
> 
> 1. Technological. That is, what neat new technologies do people want
> to work on, and
> 
> 2. Organizational. Who can find the time and experience to contribute.
> That is, either with their own resources (time, etc) or by working for
> companies that need solutions that layer on the base in this area.

I wonder if we get a bit of 2 by being excited about 1?  Now just to
find a salesperson to sell them the dream! :-)

Andrew Bartlett

-- 
Andrew Bartlett
http://samba.org/~abartlet/
Authentication Developer, Samba Team  http://samba.org
Samba Developer, Catalyst IT          http://catalyst.net.nz/services/samba