[Samba] Problems running samba in vmware

[Adam Tauno Williams]

> > On Thu, Mar 6, 2008 at 10:13 PM, Adam Zimmer <adam at ariussoftware.com> wrote:
> >> I have used samba for nearly 9 years with no problems and we have about
> >>  20 users. In the past we have had a dedicated samba server. We have
> >>  recently virtualized this server to a quad core Q6600 using vmware
> >>  virtual server 1.0.4 on a 64 bit host running ubuntu 7.10.
> > bad idea. Vmware server is not meant for production servers. Don't try
> > to save a buck and buy a copy of esx. It will save you all this
> > trouble and time is money.
> > If you really want to go along the free road, get yourself xen, linux
> > runs perfectly with the opensource 'free as in free beer' xensource.
> > Vmware server is a great testing tool, not a production one.
> Why is that?

This isn't a forum for the pros & cons of virtualization techniques;
but I can tell you that it works fine for us.  We run Samba on a half
dozen VMs hosted in vmware-server.  It works fine,  Samba doesn't care.
And vmware-server on a well tested and proven platform (OS & hardware)
has been 100% stable.  We've tested multiple failures in various ways,
most brutally: boot, VMs start automatically, yank power cord, boot,
VMs start & recover, yank power cord, etc... and it always comes back
just fine.  No lost data, no crashes.  Very impressive.   

We are buying the "real" VMware (which BTW, is just based on RedHat
anyway) but just for the VMFS feature [we can more efficiently use our
SAN] and not because of any stability issues.