[Samba] Large Configuration question

[Ilia E. Chipitsine]

> 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

W2k allows login to use Kerberos 5, you can
'migrate' to Kerberos 5 as well. there're PAM libraries to migrate
to both smbpassword (included with samba) and to migrate Kerberos.

so, probably you can manage it without moving to Active Directory.

> -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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