[Samba] Mutli-Homed Subnetting - Advice please

jools at oss4all.plus.com jools at oss4all.plus.com
Mon Jul 28 17:41:22 GMT 2008


Hi All,

I have a problem with a growing network. I inherited the network at about
200 machines and it's now reached 300 at which point the cracks are
starting to show. I have no budget to speak of but need to up the
bandwitdh so I'm looking at sticking an extra Gigabit NIC into my PDC and
splitting the network into two subnets. I have two kinds of data, static
and dynamic. Static files are put there by higher rights users (teachers)
to be accessed read only by pupils. Dynamic data includes profiles and
users work.


After reading the manuals and searching the web I have a couple of questions:

1) I assume that as the NICs are on the same server (PDC & WINS)  the WINS
server part of Samba will store both NIC IPs in the wins.dat file and that
it'll answer WINS queries from both subnet without a problem. Dynamic data
will be stored on the PDC so I assume this will be easy. Am I on safe
ground here?

2) I plan to have a server on each subnet that will hold the static data
and act as BDCs relieving the load on the PDC. Effectively, the content
will be identical but as staff update data on one, is there a way of
binding the server shares together so one updates the other. I know you
can bind two drives on a unix box together with mount --bind. Has anyone
tried binding two samba shares together? Is it easier to script an rsync 
-u .

3) Finally, I need to run login scripts based on group membership but with
static data shares mounted on a different server depending on the subnet
you're on. Any tips on stacking login scripts? Can samba do this.

Any hints and tips appreciated. I have limited time to do this and set up
three web servers with limited time for testing but that's life.

Cheers,

Jools



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