[Samba] Large Configuration question

Michael Hart unix_r_us at yahoo.ca
Fri Feb 22 06:08:08 GMT 2002


Hi all,

Our company is contemplating moving all our file
server services from Novell to a Samba implementation
on HPUX, using HP's CIFS/9000 product. CIFS/9000 is
essentially Samba with a nice installation package
wrapped around it.

I have several concerns about this, partially about
HP's setup and claims about Samba, and partially about
moving everything from 40 Novell to 1 Samba server.
I'm wondering if anyone else out there has done
anything like this.

I'll try to describe our evironment:
-roughly 4500 desktops, 95% running Windows 2000, 5%
running NT4.0
-Active Directory is the only method of authentication
-currently have roughly 40 Novell file and print
servers, with a combined 2 Terabytes of diskspace,
expected to grow to 6 Terabytes in five years.
-users typically edit files directly on their novell
volumes, instead of copying them locally first.
-roughly 250Gb of Novell storage is being used by
production systems (ie: not users, but programs on
various computers, for logging, etc)

Our concerns are as follows:
1. HP promises clean integration with Active Directory
by April (our implementation date), so we'll only have
to maintain one namespace. I have two problems with
this: the first is the latest version of Samba that HP
ships as CIFS/9000 is version 2.0.9. They don't even
include winbindd. As well, as far as I can tell, there
is no seamless support for Active Directory in the
current version, but it is planned for either version
3 (HEAD) or Samba TNG. I can't find release dates for
either, so i'm not sure how HP can make this claim.
Any ideas?

2. Since we have roughly 4000 connected users, we'll
have roughly 4000 smbd processes running. Does Samba
scale well to this size? Assume we get a box that's
big enough of course.

3. We originally wanted a NAS, not another file
server, because of the management headache of
something our size. Obviously we have an internal
problem, else I wouldn't be asking this question, but
has anyone looked at a NAS vs HPUX/CIFS?

I'd really appreciate any advice, especially from
anyone who has a Samba implementation this size. As
well, any information about Samba and Active Directory
would be helpfull, docs on that are somewhat scarce.

thanks for your time,
mike




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