[Samba] Samba with CTDB able to serve non-clustered data?

[Martin Schwenke]

Hi Stephen,

On Tue, 9 Aug 2016 18:08:15 -0400, Stephen Cousins via samba
<samba at lists.samba.org> wrote:

> I'd like to set up a HA Samba server that serves out data from NFS mounts​.
> I was thinking that CTDB was the thing to do use but it is only mentioned
> with serving clustered file systems like Gluster, Lustre, etc. Is there a
> way to set up a HA Samba server without a clustered file system?

You don't need a cluster filesystem to use CTDB.

Cluster filesystems are mentioned in relation to CTDB for 2 reasons:

* Coherency of the file data you serve with Samba

  You need to make sure that updates to the data that you are serving
  are seen coherently across the cluster.

* Split brain protection

  CTDB recommends using a recovery lock file in a cluster filesystem.
  You don't have to use this but without it you aren't protected
  against your cluster being partitioned (a.k.a. split brain).

  From Samba >= 4.5, CTDB will support a configurable helper to handle
  the recovery lock.

If you can satisfy these requirements then you're good to go...  the
important thing is to test... :-)

The ping_pong tool can test a bunch of the necessary features:

  https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Ping_pong

Good luck...

peace & happiness,
martin