[Samba] Re: What is faster...windows vs Samba

[Bradley D. Thornton]

"Jake Johnson" <jake at plutoid.com> wrote in message
news:Pine.LNX.4.56.0307082016260.10847 at zeus...
> Hello,
> I am just curious...which is faster?  Obviously if the machines are the
> same size and all conditions are equal except for the OS.

heh. how 'bout a real world example? Screw all the benchmark crapola - that
stuff's got it's place but it's just a word compared to the pictures the
real world gives you.

I irradicated a w2k advanced server acting as a DC, file and print server,
DHCP Server, and exchange server and replaced it with:

Slackware Linux 9.0
    SAMBA 2.8 - PDC/File/Print w/kixtart logon scripts
    Postfix (mail server)
    Open Webmail (uses MySQL Database server on same box)
    iptables/netfilter - acts as a masquerading firewall for the entire
org - appx 35 workstations not counting laptops
    Apache (running Interchange for the ecommerce engine).

All things being the same? It's the same hardware. Their website gets about
300 visitors a day, not much you might say but their a B2B manufacturer.
They do a lot of email and OpenWebMail serves as a complete web-based
replacement for mACROsFOT Outlook - appointment calenders. contacts and all.

They also use ACT - The database that everyone in the org uses is on this
machine.

They use BusinessWorks - for their Accounting system, etc.. - The folks at
BusinessWorks insist it won't work if on a UNIX box for some reason, dunno
why. It works flawlessly though.

This is the third month they've been up and running, and their CFO asked me
a couple of days ago, "Hey Bradley, when I close everything out during the
month end in BusinessWorks it used to take about 35-40minutes when the
server was a Windows 2000 machine. Now it finishes in about 5-7 minutes. Why
is that?" he said.

"Because you're running UNIX now instead of some toy operating system from
Redmond."

For the sake of full disclosure, I must also include that they're only
running the ext2 filesystem and not ReiserFS or XFS. Also, This guy used to
have to run the month end for the books "At the console of the w2k server"
because it took noticably longer if he did it from the workstation in his
office - Obviously, since BusinessWorks is a Win16 app (the version their
running is anyway) he can't do that any longer.

Now I suppose someone is going to jump up and say something like, "But are
you running X?" (Answer: Not installed).

The only problem I have with SAMBA, operationally, is in things like
creating new shares, etc... Workstations connected to the SAMBA Server can't
seem to see changes to the environment until they logoff and on again - I'm
not talking about just security, but for the most part, any changes to the
smb.conf file. Other than that, it just runs and runs and runs....


---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.449 / Virus Database: 251 - Release Date: 01/27/03