[Samba] About NAS versus Samba

[Gaiseric Vandal]

On 07/11/13 11:50, Jeremy Allison wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 11, 2013 at 08:01:20AM -0500, Chris Weiss wrote:
>> On Wed, Jul 10, 2013 at 11:00 PM, Jeremy Allison <jra at samba.org> wrote:
>>>> but not all NASs do.  there are
>>>> several commercial SMB/CIFS implementation out there.
>>> Sure, but non available to buy as a software-only
>>> product to my knowledge. They all come with hardware
>>> attached :-).
>> right, *I* can't buy the software, but a NAS vendor can license it for
>> a product that I can buy.
> No, they all write their own these days. None available
> to license as far as I'm aware.
I had an small iomega personal/workgroup NAS box (I think it was a 
snapserver.)   It did run linux but the samba version didn't  work with 
our samba 3.x PDC's.    I think both were 3.0.x so it could have been 
some issue with our samba implementation.    It did work with a Windows 
2003 AD but that wasn't  much use.     Some of the NAS's are now based 
on Windows Server.    But I don't think any vendor will talk about samba 
compatibility (let alone promise it.)     The Oracle/Sun NAS servers are 
based on on Solaris11 or OpenSolaris.

Even if a NAS works with your current environment there is no guarantee 
the vendor will provide patches to keep it working in the future as you 
apply security fixes or patches to your samba servers.    For samba 
users implementing a NAS might not simplify things.  If you were a 
windows only show them a NAS is probably great for a small site.       I 
would stick with a real linux/samba server-   you then have complete 
configuration control.