[Samba] About NAS versus Samba

[Jim Potter]

I use a Netgear readynas1500 as a fileserver for my Samba3/ldap domain 
which I' ve just upgraded to AD and it works fine in both cases (lots of 
users, though with relatively few active connections). It runs a bog 
standard Samba3 + winbind member server (NT or ADS) as far as I can tell.

Having said that, the 2 shortcomings I have found are with windows 7 
clients...  troubles doing offline files (there are  bunch of tweaks, 
but none work perfectly) and it doesnt work too well with the libraries 
feature in win7 (it needs indexing o some sort that isn't povided by 
samba I think)

BTW, would a Samba4 member server setup help with these issues? If it 
did, I'd upgrade even if it did invaidate warranty...

cheers

Jim

On 11/07/2013 05:03, fernando at lozano.eti.br wrote:
> Hi Cris,
>
>>> Hi there, Has anyone tried to configure a NAS server to authenticate
>>> users using a Samba PDC, or even a Samba4 DC (AD-compatible) or an IPA
>>> server?
>>
>> not in a while, but I have done a samba 3 DC
>
> This was not my question. I'm ok running samba 3 DCs. :-)
>
> Have you ever configured a NAS so it would authenticate users from 
> your Samba DC and them serve SMB file shares (aka network drives) to 
> Windows desktops?
>
>
>>> I'm evaluating replacing some Linux file server for a NAS product, but
>>> all them make me nervous when the vendor talks about "Active Directory
>>> support" and nothing else.
>>
>> if 3rd party support is your concern, why are you using fedora 
>> instead of
>> RHEL?
>
> Are you trying to sell me RHEL subscriptions or help me with my 
> question? ;-) Anything wrong about asking about Fedora on a Fedora 
> list, or any server issue is forbidden for Fedora users? ;-)
>
> AFAIK it shouldn't matter, from a technical perspective, if the samba 
> DC runs Fedora, Debian, Slackware, RHEL, SuSE, Ubuntu, Solaris, 
> whatever. I am not talking about OS level FC drivers or iSCSI 
> initiators. Either a NAS will be compatible with Samba3, Samba4, both 
> or neither. This depends on the SMB and MSRPC features needed by the 
> NAS, all them application level protocols, not kernel modules. If I'll 
> need Red Hat support for managing this system is another, unrelated, 
> question.
>
> If the NAS vendors state they suṕport RHEL, that's not que question 
> either, as supporting RHEL could mean the RHEL linux kernel smbfs and 
> cifsfs driver talks to the NAS, not the NAS talks to the Samba DC. Or 
> else, RHEL support may mean just that the NAS talks NFS and so a RHEL 
> machine can mount volumes from tne NAS. That's not what I want.
>
> Most times I see linux servers they are simply members of a MSAD 
> domain, not the DC themselves. But mine are. All vendors I talked to 
> assume MSAD, and don't know about Samba. :-(
>
> Anyway Fedora is my desktop system and development workstation. The DC 
> in question runs RHEL. But if this works I can try someday using 
> Fedora or CentOS with the same (or other) NAS.
>
>
>>>> In theory, many NASes are Linux boxes running samba, so there
>>> shouldn't be a problem, except if the web admin interface won't support
>>> a samba DC setup and I won't have SSH access to configure the NAS samba
>>> myself
>>>
>>
>> a cheaper nas will probably use samba, but not all NASs do. there are
>> several commercial SMB/CIFS implementation out there.
>
> At least iomega/lenovo/emc state their NAS runs Samba. And a lot of 
> less know vendors also. I'll buy a single, cheap NAS, not a high end 
> EMC rack full of boxes. :-)
>
> But... will any NAS you know work with a Samba DC, or else, using an 
> IPA server? Or will they only work with Microsoft Windows Server AD?
>
> All vendors I contacted talk only about MS Active Directory. They 
> don't even know about NT4-style domains, which would mean a Samba3 DC 
> should work. Besides, AFAIK a Samba4 DC isn't supported by RHEL at all 
> -- that's why I included IPA in my question -- I'd have to use Sernet 
> packages for Samba4. Even then, Samba4 is very new, I don't know if a 
> NAS implementation would accept it in place of a MSAD DC.
>
> Most vendors talk to me about vmware, exchange and sql server support. 
> They offer me windows-only backup servers and the like. Some even 
> offer me SAP R/3 agents, while my ERP is another one. They can only 
> follow their standard script for windows shops. So I ask for the 
> collective knowledge from the Fedora and Samba lists... can anyone 
> tell me "I tried this NAS and it worked"? Or should I better forget 
> about this and keep using cheap intel boxes as file servers?
>
> Am I the first linux sysadmin in the world who's considering to have a 
> NAS replacing some file servers but keeping his samba DCs?
>
>
> []s, Fernando Lozano
>