[Samba] Is there a maximum number of shares samba can serve?

[Eric Boehm]

I am being asked to determine the feasibility of serving hundreds
(300-400) of directories as individual shares instead of sharing a single
parent directory.

Personally, I don't think this is a good idea. Clients will go from
having a single connection to a single share to 50-300 connections to
multiple shares. That can't be good for performance or load.

I've searched the mailing list, the web, the documentation, the wiki
and the source code. I haven't been able to determine the maximum, if
any. Of course, I may have missed it. Feel free to point me to the
correct documentation or source file.

I've seen some references that you can't have either more than 145 or
165 shares per samba server.

However, if there is anyone running such a large number of shares and
has advice, I am happy to listen.

-- 
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