[Samba] Urgent: Integrating a NAS-Filer in a Samba-PDC controlled domain

[jra at dp.samba.org]

On Tue, Sep 10, 2002 at 08:48:27AM +1000, Andrew Bartlett wrote:
> > Manuel Elgorriaga Kunze wrote:
> > 
> > Hello,
> > 
> > I'm using Samba 2.2.5 on SuSE 7.3kKernel 2.4.16 as a PDC for 50 users
> > (soon 80), serving files and CUPS-printqueues for our Win9x boxes.
> > Besides some occasional, but nonetheles quite irritating,
> > locking-problems, the Samba-solution works fine and reliable for our
> > pool of about 20 GB of data. In a few months, we should get new
> > infrastructure and we plan to do audio-recording directly on NAS-filer
> > through a 100Mbit network.
> > 
> > My problem is now, that none of the NAS-filers of the vendors we've
> > tested (NetApp, Procom) can be integrated in a Samba-PDC/domain: you
> > can only choose to use "shared mode" or full integration in a
> > MS-NT-PDC or MS-Win2k-ADS system. It just doesn't work using a
> > Samba-PDC, no matter what fine-tuning you try to do, and vendors are
> > well aware of this problem, but they don't work on it because it's a
> > "very small market" (textual citation from a discussion). So: anybody
> > does have a commercial NAS-Filer running in a Samba domain? 
> 
> The new Quantum Gardian line should work fine - but you will need to use
> Samba HEAD on the PDC.  (No prizes for guessing what's inside ;-).
> 
> We are aware of the issues with NetApp - and need to determine how we
> differ from Win2k.  Unfortunetly due to the relitive market size, NetApp
> is unable to put much time into this from their end, but have given us
> some assistance.  

Indeed. At the last CIFS conference we asked both NetApp and EMC
for software simulators so we can fix a Samba PDC to work with
their NAS boxes. NetApp gave us a simulator, nothing yet from EMC
that I know of.

I don't think NetApp or EMC will yet "officially" support a Samba
PDC but if we can make it work then they'll point people at our docs
with a "you're on your own" disclaimer.

Jeremy.