samba digest, Vol 1 #367 - 49 msgs

[Scott Lawson]

>
> Message: 27
> Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2001 11:30:39 +0200 (MEST)
> From: Max Ahston <qtxmahs at dmn.hf.sw.ericsson.se>
> To: samba at lists.samba.org
> Subject: Q: Samba on Solaris with MANY users.
>
> I want to come in contact with administrators on sites with 1000+ of
> concurrent users.
>

We use Samba across many Sun Unix servers, most of which are either E450 or
E250. The largest of these has about 800 Gb of disk and up to 1000 concurrent
users. We use mostly Solaris 7 servers but these are being migrated to Solaris 8.
We use standard NIS for our authentication against a password database that has
around 6,500 account in it. I always do a standard compile of the software using
the latest version of gcc (older versions have got some memory leaking issues).

I also use Veritas file system across our shared file systems, these are mostly
218 Gb A1000 arrays. I have created 3 logon domain servers and a dedicated
wins server.

The on major thing is to make sure that you have enough RAM to make samba
work properly. In my largest E450 I have 4 Gb of RAM to  make thing's run
smoothly. If you don't you find that Solaris will swap out your idle processes to
swap if they sit there for too long, consequences are that you get some weird delays
accessing currently connected network drives if you are away from your PC for a long
time, or if your users don't log off their PC's over night.

The one thing I have noticed is that the smbd processes have a tendency to grow in
size over a period of time, so keeping a close monitor on memory availability is crucial
to keeping your users happy. (no different from any other Solaris box). I think this
growth in process size is attributed to the way it works with the configuration file, it always
seems to grow after this file has been altered. I currently use 2.07 on my biggest servers
but I have recently brought up a couple of 2.2 servers as well. I believe there has been
a bit of work on the way the configuration database is stored in memory and has been
optimized a bit better.

The other thing is if you are going to use an E450 for a large amount of data storage and
backup then a Gigabit Nic comes in handy when you have to back the thing up! I currently
have Gigabit links into all of my servers and am looking at fitting second links to some of
the biggest servers. Try backing up 800 Gb of data across a 100 mb link and you will see
what I mean! I use Solstice backup and an L3500 library driven by an E250 to be able to
back this up.

>
> Mostly I'm interested in your experince and problems you might have run
> into. There must be some "common" problem (as always with computers) that
> I'm hoping I could solve before they happens.
>
> General hints and tips of tuning the systems and Samba.
>

Other than the above nothing special is required. Whatever you do don't configure it to use
inet, ALWAYS use daemons!

>
> During the coming months we will move aprox 1500 users into a couple of
> Sun E450's running Samba with aprox 1 TB of data.
>

All in all these Sun servers should prove far more reliable and scalable than the equivalent
Windows NT solution.

>
> Sincerely,
>
> Max!
>
>  max.ahston at dmn.hf.sw.ericsson.se  | max at ahston.se
>  Ericsson Telecom                  | Tamira Konsult AB
>

Good luck,

Scott.

__________________________________________________________________

Scott Lawson
Systems Manager
Department Of Information Services
St. George's Hospital Medical School
Tooting
London SW17 0RE
UK

P: 44 (0)208 725 2896
F: 44 (0)208 725 3583

mailto:s.lawson at sghms.ac.uk

http://www.sghms.ac.uk

Quote of the week :

"The difference between 'involvement' and 'commitment' is like a
bacon-and-eggs breakfast: the chicken was 'involved' - the pig was
'committed'."

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