[Samba] server hardware

steve steve at steve-ss.com
Mon Aug 20 03:46:39 MDT 2012


On 20/08/12 10:59, Helmut Hullen wrote:
> Hallo, steve,
>
> Du meintest am 20.08.12:
>
>> This is a bit off thread, but could you specify any budget
>> hardware/minimum Samba4 DC Samba3 fileserver server requirements for
>> a college of 2000 students sharing 150 duel boot KDE/w7?
>
> Where's the problem?
> Such configurations need a machine with 2 GHz CPU, 4 GByte RAM and
> (better) 2 or 4 NICs.
>
> No machine with a "server" label.
> Here in germany many schools (especially vocational schools) run Samba
> 3.x since many years for more than 1000 pupils and 100 to 200 clients.
> And since many months with private smartphones too (connected via WLAN).
>
> The samba load (for directories on the server) is most times small,
> "squid" bears a much bigger load (for surfing).
>
> The biggest samba problem seems to be where and how to store the user's
> profile.
>
> Viele Gruesse!
> Helmut
>

Hi Helmut
Thanks for taking on the thread.
You give me encouragement in that the hardware requirements seem low. In 
fact we have been using 2 old laptops running from 16GB usb pendrives as 
our replicating DC's serving 10 client boxes no trouble at all. I see 
the main problem (and probably cost too) in the file server and 
redundancy. As the infrastructure is already in place (it's a 6 year old 
installation with cables everywhere) we need to make a decision on how 
to serve, store and backup files. We have a low budget and have looked 
at raid, a DRDB cluster and just rsyncing out to a backup server at 
regular intervals, switching cables and doing an IP takeover when the 
main fileserver goes down.

Just thinking out loud.
Cheers,
Steve



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