[Samba] Ideas for distributed Samba servers

[Stan Hoeppner]

Robert LeBlanc put forth on 4/11/2010 8:19 PM:
> On Sun, Apr 11, 2010 at 9:03 AM, ravi channavajhala <
> ravi.channavajhala at dciera.com> wrote:
> 
>> WAFS (Wide Area File System) appliances can be very well deployed for this
>> sort of thing precisely.  Unfortunately, I don't know of any opensource
>> project for WAFS.  However, commercial solutions such as Riverbed, Expand
>> Networks, CISCO/WAFS, Juniper/Peribit do exist.
>>
>>
> So far, this is the direction that we may go. We have looked at a Riverbed
> product, it's good to know alternatives. This may not be as much of an issue
> as it was in the past as I believe we my get a network upgrade that will
> negate the need for this.

I would think it would be cheaper and more straight forward to replace the
GbE port on each end of the fiber link with a 10GbE port than to deal with
the complexity of caching and replication, or other such options, especially
for two buildings on the same campus.  The fiber link is on campus and thus
you control any right-of-way issues, correct?

If this is the case, upgrading the link speed on the fiber is definitely the
way to go.  If multiple pairs were run when the line was originally
trenched, as is customary, setup ISL bonding of two 10GbE links between the
two buildings' switches.  Problem solved.  Make sure you have at least one
10GbE NIC (preferably two NICs bonded) in the Samba server that exports the
data on the disk array or the fat pipe between the buildings won't matter much.

It will be interesting to see what Samba bottlenecks you run into after you
get the big phat pipes setup.

-- 
Stan