[Samba] Which version do I need for SMB2?

[John Klimek]

Thanks for the reply!

(Responses below...)

On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 3:05 PM, Volker
Lendecke<Volker.Lendecke at sernet.de> wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 02:53:26PM -0400, John Klimek wrote:
>> First off, I'm a little confused but I've been trying to do some
>> research and still have some questions... (please forgive me!)
>>
>> I'm trying to figure out the "best" (ie. fastest) way to connect from
>> Ubuntu to Windows Server 2008.  I can use SMB, SMB2, or NFS.
>
> Ubuntu is the server or client? If it's the client, try "linux-cifs".
>

Ubuntu is the client.  Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) to be specific.

I'm not sure what you mean by "try linux-cifs".  Are you suggesting I
create local mount points using linux-cifs as the filesystem type?

>> >From what I've gathered, Samba4 includes SMB2 support but what about
>> Samba3?  If so, which version supports it?  (v3.3.2?)
>
> Samba4 contains an implementation of both SMB2 client and
> server, but that has not seen any serious development for
> many months. Stefan Metzmacher right now is developing an
> SMB2 server for Samba3. I would expect a release with Samba
> 3.5 in latest beginning 2010. My personal expectation would
> be that we do not enable it by default yet so that it can
> settle, and that we enable it by default with 3.6 in July
> 2010.
>
>> I'm also confused about "smbfs".  It seems like it's been discontinued
>> in favor of "linux-cifs" so I'm wondering if that supports SMB2 and
>> what package(s) would be needed to create mount points using that.
>
> None of the versions of smbfs or linux-cifs right now
> shipped in major distributions do smb2.

I'm willing to upgrade so that's not really a big issue.  I just need
to know which version to upgrade to (eg. Samba3 or Samba4)

>
> By the way, it's just not true that SMB2 is faster than
> SMB1. It might be true for Microsoft's client
> implementations, but a properly tuned SMB1 client can almost
> saturate a 10GigE connection. I've seen more than
> 700MBytes/second Samba->smbclient on a single SMB1
> connection where the raw TCP speed would have been a little
> less than 800MBytes/sec on the same hardware.

I've heard that before as well but I've also heard/seen benchmarks
where SMB2 is much, much faster than SMB1.  However, like you said,
perhaps it's due to SMB optimizations.

Do you suggest I stick with Samba3 v3.3.2 and just use SMB?

I'd really prefer to use SMB2 (if possible) especially since I
upgraded to Windows Server 2008 almost specifically for this feature
but if you are telling me that Samba3 (v3.3.2) will provide me almost
exactly the same performance than I'll stick with that.  However, if I
need to optimize my configuration (versus no additional optimization
with Samba4?) than that's a different story.

Thanks so much for your help!