[Samba] Looking for Information on Commercial Deployments

[Avery Payne]

Hi folks!  I'm looking for someone who has placed a commercial deployment 
of Samba into production in or around the Portland, OR area.  If you are 
on the US west coast, or can call me during work hours in the Pacific 
time zone, I would even be happy to contact you by phone.  My department 
at work has a few questions, such as:

- Size of the deployment (in servers and users)

- How critical is the deployment to your business (incidental, 
department, critical, etc.)

- What trade-offs have you seen when compared to using a "traditional" 
Windows server deployment?  (Compatibility, service management, etc.)

- What benefits have you gained vs. a "traditional" Windows server 
deployment?  (bonus features or services)

- What kind of model did you adopt for your filesystem and share level 
security?  Specifically, what scheme did you adopt for file ownership/
group on the filesystem?  Have you had issues with needing to "fix" file 
permissions?  If you use ACLs, are you using a POSIX-based ACL system 
(which limits emulation of Windows file permissions), or have you found a 
better way to provide a finer-grained control?  Do you use Windows 
administation tools to set file permissions at all, and if so, how has 
that worked for you?  This is a question we're very curious about.

- What is your choice of back-end for Samba to store its data in?  tdb? 
ldap?  something else?

All of these questions will help us assess our current deployment, while 
gaining insight into improvements that we may be able to make.  Any 
information you have would be greatly appreciated!  Feel free to email me 
directly at apayne at pcfruit.com.

Thanks in advance!