Large scale Samba installations

[Daniell Freed]

Could you make sure any of the replies you recieve about that is are
posted, please?  I am very interested in this as well.  We are possably
considering doing something similar this winter, to replace our Netware
servers instead of upgrading them again.

Dan

acherry at pobox.com wrote:

> Hello Samba folks-
>
> I'm currently in the position of trying to convince my IT management
> that using Samba to provide SMB services to our NT client base is a
> Good Thing.  Our client/server situation is as follows:
>
>      o An HA cluster of two quad-cpu (400MHz) Sun Enterprise servers,
>        with IP address takeover on failover.
>      o About 1000 Windows NT clients connecting via SMB
>      o About 250 Solaris/SPARC clients connecting via NFS
>
> We're currently using a commerical product (which I will be kind
> enough not to name) which is proving to not scale well at all.  This
> has less to do with the capabilities of our servers and network, and
> more to do with some serious design flaws in the product.  As a
> result, I'm getting very close to convincing my superiors that Samba
> is the way to go, despite being an "unsupported freeware" product.
> At this point, the main concern is that we have only used Samba on a
> smaller scale, so we don't have direct evidence that it will fare
> any better once we scale it up to the level mentioned above.
>
> I'm pretty sure I can make Samba work in a symmetric failover
> situation by running two separate instances of Samba and bind only to
> the appropriate interface in each (the cluster does IP address
> takevoer in the event of a failover).  My guess is that this is what
> HP does in their packaging of Samba for their HA servers.  This would
> be a major selling point for Samba, since the commercial product can't
> do this (i.e. half of our cluster is basically sitting idle)... though
> of course they promise that it will be "supported in the next release"
> ;-)
>
> So, I'm looking for examples of successful Samba installations on this
> scale (or larger!).  If anyone on this list has administered such an
> installation, I'd GREATLY appreciate it if you could provide some input
> regarding both the positives and the negatives you've encountered in
> your installation.
>
> I'd be especially interested in sites that use Samba on Solaris/SPARC
> servers, doubly so for HA environments.  But other platforms would be
> of interest also -- I'm mostly interested in the scalability of Samba
> itself.
>
> Thanks!
>
> -Andrew

--
Daniell Freed
Computer Services
Dewitt, Ross, & Stevens S.C.

He who fights with monsters might take care
lest he thereby become a monster.
And if you gaze for long into an abyss,
the abyss gazes also into you.

Beyond Good and Evil
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzche


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