[Samba] Best practice in small office

[Gary Dale]

Keep using roaming profiles. With Gigabit ethernet, you shouldn't
experience performance problems. However, having My Documents on a
network share may cause problems with the laptops.

Upgrading to Samba 3 shouldn't cause major problems, but test it first
before going live.

The laptop issue again sounds like you need roaming profiles. You will
also need a VPN for them to be able to log onto your network remotely.
Performance may be an issue here. I'd suggest they log onto the network
at work first to get an updated local copy of their profile.

Re. outlook. I'd suggest that if you have a problem, switch to
Thunderbird. Your users will love you for it!


Russell Horn wrote:

>Hi folks,
>
>I've been reading the definitive guide to samba3 and Samba3 by example as
>well as scouring on line for advice. Sometimes however I find different
>suggested solutions to the same problem, so perhaps the list can give me
>some help with current strategies for these issues.
>
>We are a small office and are currently going through an IT refurb.
>Previously we've had a mix of laptops and desktops running Win2k or WinXP
>with roaming profiles on samba 2.2.3
>
>This has worked pretty well, people tend not to change computer but thee
>roaming profile has been of help in a couple of hard disk crashes.
>
>Our new setup is all XP and mainly desktops - about 15 of them with just
>three laptop users. My thought is to stick with roaming profiles and
>configure the desktops not to save the profile data - that should let users
>swap machines if one dies and at the same tme not leave huge chunks of other
>users' data on the hard disk. Is that a reasonable strategy?
>
>Does it make sense to map My Documents to the user's home folder or is there
>a benefit to bringing their entire profile over the network at the start of
>the session then copying it back when they log off?
>
>Will I see any great benefit from upgrading to Samba3 or should I stick with
>what works?
>
>We have a couple of laptops that I'd like users to be able to check out if
>they do need to work outside the office. Ideally I'd like them to be able to
>ge their data onto the laptop and remove it when they finish using it after
>a few days. Is there a sensible way to do this with samba or is this really
>a task for a VPN connection?
>
>Final issue is Outlook. If I remember correctly, it doesn't like PST files
>living on a Samba share. What's the best way for me to deal with these big
>PST files.
>
>As I mentioned we're a relatively small office. We're also running gigabit
>to the desktops and laptops, so I'm not too concerned about shifting pretty
>large quantities of data if that makes a difference to how we should
>proceed.
>
>Any thoughts or advice would be really appreciated.
>
>Russell.
>  
>