[Samba] file server or member server?

[Gaiseric Vandal]

Good explanation.  Better than mine.


I tend to think of the roaming profiles as part of the logon experience, 
since they sync with your computer when you logon. Actually, I found 
roaming profiles to be more trouble than they were worth so I don't use 
them anyway.



On 07/01/13 17:36, Jonathan Buzzard wrote:
> On 01/07/13 19:56, steve wrote:
>
> [SNIP]
>
>> Yes. We take stand alone machines and network them by adding a DC and
>> what we call a file server. What I'd like to know is why some guys here
>> call what seems to be what we call a file server, a member server. I
>> feel we're missing out on something.
>
> In both NT4 style and AD domains you have servers called domain 
> servers that serve identification information and provide 
> authentication services. These servers may also do other things such 
> as serve files, but it is the identification and authentication 
> services that make them domain servers. Any server providing 
> identification and authentication services is a domain server 
> regardless of anything else it does.
>
> You can then have other servers, such as file servers, print servers, 
> web servers etc. that are joined to the domain, and thus you can use 
> your domain credentials to authenticate to these servers, in the case 
> of an AD domain using the Kerberos ticket you got when you logged onto 
> your workstation. However crucially they don't provide identification 
> or authentication services. These servers are called member servers.
>
> With larger domains it makes sense to separate out your file and print 
> servers from your domain servers, so that the domain servers are 
> effectively only providing the identification and authentication 
> services and your file and print services are handed off to dedicated 
> machines for the task. There is no way a domain server is going to 
> cope at a large University for example with tens of thousands of users.
>
> This however is very basic Windows domain terminology/knowledge which 
> I would expect anyone offering advice on Samba to fully understand first.
>
> JAB.
>