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

[Simon Hobson]

Dragan Krnic wrote:
>I think I'm clear about what this young Jedi knight
>is asking. His conundrum is that he'll end up with
>way too many servers if he implements both a Windows
>Terminal Server and a Samba file and printer server
>on separate machines.

That's how I read it too. Does he keep his 10 Samba servers and add 
another 10 Windows servers to do terminal services, or does he put 
his file and print services on the same Windows servers and only have 
10 servers to manage ?

I suppose a few things for him to think about would be :

1) Does he intend separating File/print services from Terminal 
services (for performance reasons ?) in the future ? If so, then it 
would make sense to leave the file/print servers that are already 
there as they are rather than migrate them to the one server and 
separate them out again later.

Bear in mind that there are arguments both for and against consolidation :
Consolidation puts all your files on the same machine as the 
applications, so minimal network traffic and networking issues. On 
the other hand, keeping the two roles separate may (depending on your 
applications and situation) give you better performance and/or less 
risk from an individual service failure.

2) Are there any specific management benefits either way ? It's not 
so much "are 10 servers easier to manage than 20" but "is a group of 
Windows servers easier to manage than a group of Windows servers plus 
a group of Linux/Samba servers". This is very much down to the 
experience of the individual/team, but I would guess that since they 
already have these servers then they are probably also comfortable 
with administering them.

3) Are there any performance/reliability/capacity issues with the 
existing servers ? If so then it may work out cheaper to spec the new 
servers to handle both roles than it is to upgrade/replace the 
existing hardware.

4) What is your budget, and what are the relative costs ? Does the 
per-user Terminal Services licence cover the file and print services 
when the user is using only the terminal services ? If so then there 
is minimal cost to combine the two services. On the other hand, if 
you have to add File/Print client licences then this could add up to 
a fair wad of cash.

5) Other than File/Print services, are there any other reasons for 
keeping a Linux server on site ? Eg, do you want to run the ISC DHCP 
server (no Windows version I believe), or will the MS DHCP server do 
you ?

Just a few things to ponder over. But at the end of the day, everyone 
has to make a decision on what works for them - and leaving 
'religious fervour' out of it, we can't answer it for him.

Simon

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Simon Hobson MA MIEE, Technology Specialist
Colony Gift Corporation Limited
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