[Samba] server hardware

[Rowland Penny]

On 20/08/12 11:12, 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.
> [...]
>
>> 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.
> I prefer "rsnapshot", at least on a separate disk (or bundle of disks).
> By the way: RAID is no backup.

I can vouch for RAID not being a backup, the place where I worked had a 
Unix server (proper Unix from that mob that tried to stop Linux)
It had RAID, 4 disks, first two were stripped and the other two mirrored 
the first two. There was a fault, it was never proved whether it was 
hardware or software related. Anyway the disks got corrupt - ALL of them 
and the server crashed, everything gone! It was a good job we did data 
backups every night as it took two days to get the server back up again, 
but then the service engineer did have to come from the other end of the 
country to confirm what I had already told them.

>> We have a low budget and have looked at raid,
> Not necessary.
> On schools with about 1000 pupils: install "quota". Then you may need
> about 500 ... 1000 GByte HD place.
>
>> 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.
> Take a look at "rsnapshot". It allows online backups. HD place: I start
> with about 3 times the actual "/home" size (the used size, not the
> installed size).
>
> Please excuse my gerlish.
>
> Viele Gruesse!
> Helmut

It doesn't matter what backup system you use, just make sure that it is 
reliable and that any backups can be taken off site for storage, backups 
are only any good if they cannot be stolen, burnt or destroyed along 
with the originals.

Rowland



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