[Samba] hardware sizing and configuration

[Sven Schwedas]

On 2015-05-12 21:50, David Bear wrote:
> Understanding that a samba 4.x ADDC should be run on a an os separate
> than a samba 4. file server, I was thinking of virtualizing both. Is it
> common to have a single physcial server with two VM's running samba?

Yes. Putting file server and DC on the same logical machine is inviting
trouble at best, and at <50 users, one moderately fast server has more
than enough resources to deal with client requests. Virtualization is
probably the more common form of deployment nowadays…

> If some is there a recommendation on how much hardware to start with and
> how much virtual hardware to give each VM.

Fileserver storage will obviously vary, and RAM depending on how much of
said storage you want to keep cached. But neither server will need much
CPU power, and 1-2 GiB RAM will suffice for Samba alone (i.e., on the
file server you'll want a few gigabytes more for caching/buffering files).

> I'm wondering about virtual
> nics and if there may be a problems have multiple vm's accessing the
> network through a single physcial nic.

No, about all virtualization solutions take care of that. DCs don't
generate much traffic anyway, so you'd mainly be concerned about making
sure there's enough bandwidth to handle the users' fileserver I/O.

> This is an ADDC and file server for a small office so numbers of users
> will be below 50. Any recommendations?

For comparison, we have two servers with one Xeon E3-1230 V2 and 16GiB
RAM each per 10-person office in a master-slave setup with only one
active at a time, and the CPU load is negligible. At 50 users I'd only
be worried about the server's 1GBit NIC being a bottleneck.

-- 
Mit freundlichen Grüßen, / Best Regards,
Sven Schwedas
Systemadministrator
TAO Beratungs- und Management GmbH | Lendplatz 45 | A - 8020 Graz
Mail/XMPP: sven.schwedas at tao.at | +43 (0)680 301 7167
http://software.tao.at

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