Samba in a WAN Environment

[Sean Elble]

Marion,

Using a Samba server will limit you to one WINS
server, whereas this isn't the case with Windows
NT/2000. Windows NT/2000 have a WINS replication
protocol that is similar in the function that it
provides to Oracle's DB replication. Samba does NOT
support this function yet, and thus, failover WINS
servers are not supported. It is also _very_ hard to
setup a backup, because WINS information is updated
based upon client SMB names provided by the clients
themselves. In other words, if a Windows client cannot
send the same naming information to more than one WINS
server (which is the case), then you really have no
option, other than to use Windows NT/2000 servers with
WINS replication enabled, which is probably less
reliable than one Samba server anyway. :-) Anyway, if
you are really worried about that, you could setup a
single Samba server that does nothing but act as a
WINS server, and just point all the servers and
clients at it. That should definitely help from a
reliability point of view.

Also, note that WINS is a depreciated "feature" as of
Windows 2000. Microsoft is trying to decouple SMB from
NetBIOS (very hard to do, even harder for Samba to
keep up with), and, in the process, they are moving
from WINS to DNS for name resolution. Samba _does_
have a DNS proxy option, though I am not all that
familar with it. What this means is that DNS may be an
option for you, and, if my memory serves me correctly,
BIND9 supports replication, so that would take care of
_that_ issue. ;-) Then all you'd have to do is figure
out someway of storing client SMB host names in DNS,
though I've seen that done. Hope that helps.
--- marion.haines at countygovt.brevard.fl.us wrote:
> Brevard County is about 70 miles long and 20 miles
> wide.  We have many small sites around the County
> that will eventually have their current servers
> replaced with Linux/Samba servers.  We've been
> successfully running a test Samba server since
> January and I'm convinced of it's stability and
> usefulness ... good work Samba Team and Linux in
> general.
> 
> Other than for the test Samba server, I've never had
> to work with a WINS server before and my current
> questions revolve around the use of the WINS
> server(s).  The plan is for certain shares on each
> server to be open to any authorized user on any of
> the LANs that comprise the WAN and the question came
> up about what to do if the WINS server is down, or
> it's segment of the WAN is down.  Quite frankly, I
> didn't have a clue as to how to answer that one. 
> Please also note that we want to keep WinNT/Win2K
> servers to an absolute minimum.  In fact, we hope to
> have NO WinNT/Win2K servers anywhere on the network,
> but realize that may not be practical.
> 
> As we start to put Samba servers onto the WAN, are
> we limited to using a single Linux server as the
> WINS server?
> 
> Or do we set up each server to be a local WINS
> server and then get the WINS servers talking
> together somehow?
> 
> Or is there a way to set up a second, redundant WINS
> server somewhere on the WAN?
> 
> Curious as to how others have handled this issue.
> 
> Thanks for the help, 
> Marion D. Haines
> Network Administrator
> Board of County Commissioners
> Brevard County, Florida
> ================================== 
> EMail:  marion.haines at countygovt.brevard.fl.us
> Phone: 321-617-7398
> ================================== 
> 
> 
> 
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=====
-----------------------------------------------
Sean P. Elble
Editor, Writer, Co-Webmaster
ReactiveLinux.com (Formerly MaximumLinux.org)
http://www.reactivelinux.com/
elbles at reactivelinux.com
-----------------------------------------------

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