Samba vs. NetAppliance

Paul L. Lussier plussier at baynetworks.com
Fri Jun 25 19:14:05 GMT 1999


In a message dated: Sat, 26 Jun 1999 03:36:13 +1000
Jeremy Allison said:

>Benn, Paul wrote:
>> 
>> > -----Original Message-----
>
>>True, most NT software doesn't use the ACL design and most Windows users don't
>>need to bother with ACLs. The NT administrators who set everything up need to
>>though and they may have reason to setup complex ACLs, something that can't be
>> done with UNIX file permissions.

Well, I for one, am still trying to figure out why one would need:

	No Access
	List
	Read
	Add
	Add & Read
	Change
	Full Control

IMO, all you need are the Unix permissions, read, write, and execute.
With the proper combinations of these, you can do all of the above.

>Everything that can be done with NT ACLs can be done with POSIX ACLs.
>Admittedly, not everything can be done with UNIX permissions only, but
>the missing cases are rather baroque (and I would argue fairly uncommon
>in the IT world).

Being a representative of that world, I'll agree with that.  We sysadmins like 
things to be as simple as possible, but with great flexibility.  NT ACLs only 
provide great confusion.

>Well that's just a difference in target market. CIFS Filers are designed to
>go into Windows only environments (at least until Microsoft decides you
>have no business being there. Good luck then :-). Samba is designed to
>slot into mixed UNIX/Windows environments and to give control of the
>file sharing back to the UNIX admins. And judging by the response to my
>article in Microsoft Certified Professional magazine there are a
>lot of NT admins who are *very* interested in becoming UNIX/Linux admins :-).

Exactly!  As a matter of fact, Samba is going to allow me to completely 
replace my NT domain with another Unix box.  Of course, I will have all my 
storage on NetApp boxes, but even with the CIFS license for the NetApps, I 
still need the NT PDC, and I'm out about $10K per NetApp. With Samba I can 
throw out my NT box, throw a $600 Dual Pentium II system in there and have it 
act as the PDC for my entire windows based community, provide both file *and* 
print services, *and* only allow the Windows people to see the particular 
shares I want them to see. Oh, and I can throw a bunch of CDRom drives on the 
Samba server and share those too.  Oh, and the total cost of *all* that is 
$600 for the PC.  Support?  The Linux community was voted to provide the best 
support by (I think) PC Magazine last year.  I've been on the 'net since 
before the web existed, and let me tell you, there is no better support than 
mailing lists and usenet news groups.

I suppose you can throw out the "What about that mission-critical, late night 
problem" argument and ask who's going to support me then.  And my answer is 
still, "I get better support out of the net than I do any commercial entity".
And that includes NetApp (whom I've waited so long for for answers, that when 
they do call, I've forgotten what the question was.  Usually because someone 
on the net has long since helped me solve the problem :)
-- 

Seeya,
Paul
----
Please reply to plussier at baynetworks.com.  The corp sendmail people insist on
rewriting outgoing mail to send to '@nortelnetworks.com' which we keep telling
them is quite broken, but they don't listen :)

Broadband Technology Division - Bay Networks (now a Nortel Company, Eh? :)

	If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right!




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