[Samba] Implementing a Samba-NAS or Buying a NAS-Appliance

[Manuel Elgorriaga Kunze]

Hello,

We're planning to introduce a NAS in our Non Profit Organization (Swiss
Library for the Blind)this summer. The NAS will be integrated in a fully
Linux environment (server side) and allow for a central storage
consolidation of business data, as well as for the realtime recording of
audio data (through the network, with 22.1 kHz 16 bit mono). The 100 users
(WinXP PC's) will access a 100 GB data partition, while the 12 WinXP
audio-workstations will record/edit on the 400 GB audio-data partition (not
all at the same time!). Of course, the NAS will have two 1 Gbit NIC's, one
connected to the office-subnet switches, the other to the audio-subnet
switch. Separate backup- and archive-facilities (LTO tape libraries) will
complement the offline-storage side.

The question is: will Samba 2.2.3a/Linux 2.4.16 (or whatever is stable in
summer) run smoothly with this scenario on an powerful intel-server with
RAID-5 SCSI-Disks? We will have several partitions, most of them, including
the 400 GB for the audio-production, mounted through Samba as
CIFS-filesystem. A few smaller partitions will allocate diskspace for
services accessing them through NFS (IMAP and others); the backup-server
will mount nightly all of the partitions also as NFS. Some additional
requirements would be: central authentification through OpenLDAP (should
work by now, right?), snapsots (through Linux-LVM), and ACL's (would be nice
to have, but we can wait until they are officially implemented in the Linux
kernel).

Up to now we only deployed Samba/Linux at department level, serving 10 GB
for 35 PC's, and it runs fine (though there are, very occasionally, some
locking problems), but I ask myself, if it will work at a bigger scale. As
NPO, we are very concerned about costs, but at the same time, we'll need a
reliable online storage; however, I also know that there might be problems
integrating some commercial NAS-appliances into a non-WinNT/2K environment.
Now, I'd like to get some advices/hints/criticisms, do's and dont's and
hands-on experiences about this topic.

Thank you very much in advance,
Manuel Elgorriaga Kunze

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Manuel Elgorriaga Kunze, IT Department
Swiss Library for the Blind and Visually Impaired
CH - 8047 Zurich, Switzerland
Phone: + 41 1 491 25 55, Fax: + 41 1 492 64 75