[Samba] Migrate BACK to WINDOWS -> Talk me out of it QUICK

[Adam Tauno Williams]

> We have just started to roll out Thinstation thin-clients  that are
> connecting to Win TSRV servers.  What is being planned is 1 Terminal
> Server per location.  This will significantly reduce the adminstrative
> nightmare on multiple Windows boxes and centralize it.  However, this
> is where I start to feel that I am having too many servers per
> location, seeing that the windows server could do what the Samba
> server is doing, I am in debate about moving back to windows (I have
> will need to licenses and boxes there anyhows)

No! Bad! Having the same box to DC/WINS/DNS/etc... as runs user apps is a
disaster (trust me, I've dismantled & refactored the networks of shops that
tried to put everything on one windows machine). 

> One other option is just ot house a ginormous WIN-TSRV at the central

That would be my choice.

> location.  However, I am afraid of issues with printing back to the
> remote locations (pushing large files through the 1/2 T-1 to print).

Verses all the filesystem and other support (profiles, WINS, DNS, LDAP, etc...)
traffic?  Use QoS to relagte the print traffic to second-class status and/or
tunnell the print traffic through a compressor (postscript is wonderfully
compressible, and some printers support compression themselves).
 
> Another option is to remove the samba servers from the remote
> location, and just have a samba PDC with authenticating windows tsrv
> machines. - I dont like this option for some reason

Is the TS actually useful without a connection to the central servers (database,
middleware, etc...)?  Do you still have stand-alone workstations, laptops,
etc..?  The TS probably caches the profile/login anyway so it might remain
usable for a time even if the circuit it down.

> I really dont want to move away from the SAMBA backend, but at the
> same time dont want to stay with it just because I 'like it' and I
> 'want to'.  So I am looking for discussion/arguements as to why I
> should stay with the Samba server and a win-tsrv server, as opposed to
> just moving to a MS backend.

Whatever your have - samba or not - don't pile it all on one machine, and
certainly not on a terminal server running user apps.