Looking for Large Scale SAMBA Install Success / Failure Stories

[Mike Brodbelt]

"George, Michael" wrote:
> 
> Samba Users,
> 
> I am looking for a Large Scale SAMBA success or failure story.  I have been
> using Samba for a long time without any issues, however replacing many
> Netware servers with Linux/Solaris running Samba is a different story. Here
> is what is running through my mind
> 
> 1. Novell 4.x causes a never ending stream of problems, including attacking
> and flooding the network with NDS tree fragments.  Essentially a DoS attack.
> Not to mention to go to Novell V 5.0 and possibly get software that works,
> Novell want hundreds of thousands to to upgrade.
> 
> 2. Do I really want to take on the headaches of file and print services for
> the PC community? Sure I could grow my team, but how robust is samba?  The
> big three of user complaints are 1) I can't login, 2) I can't print, and 3)
> The server is down.  This would expose me to all 3.  Wouldn't it be
> better/easier to form a new Windows2000 team and give them the cash from the
> Novell upgrade and do a migration?
> 
> 3. How well does Samba work with things like Micro$oft access?  Will Samba
> do all the locking properly?  We already have an Access Database corruption
> problem. Will it get worse, stay the same, or get better?

Samba fully supports oplocks and should have no problem with Access
databases. I use it with Access, as do others I know, and while getting
the locking set up correctly can occasionally be troublesome to start
with, it shouldn't present any serious problems.

> 4. Samba = MicroSoft Networking = spam the network with NetBeui traffic.
> What is the network impact?  Not to say that IPX is a network lightweight by
> any means, especially with the recent Novell NDS spams.

Samba uses NetBIOS calls, but these are all over TCP/IP. Samba
implements Microsoft Networking  *only* over TCP/IP. 

> 5. I trust UNIX (Linux / Solaris).  UNIX to date has not failed me.  It has
> hosted databases, applications, webservers, faxservers, served disks, and
> printers and basically runs SOLID.

Samba, in my experience, is similarly solid.

> Please help me take the plunge or stop me before I make a big mistake!  I am
> typically a UNIX/OpenSource biggot, but I have learned the "using the right
> tool for the right job" usually is the right thing to do.

Personally, I think Samba is the right answer for you. I use it to serve
only 50 or so users here, but I know of one person using it to serve
57,000 users across an NT domain environment, so it certainly does
scale...

HTH

Mike