[Samba] Why is Samba4 not recommended as a file server?

[John Gardeniers]

Hi Mark,

You may have misunderstood. It's only the Samba 4 domain controllers 
that shouldn't be used as file servers. A regular server, whether domain 
member or free- standing, works perfectly as a file server.

regards,

John


On 28/07/16 15:31, Mark Foley wrote:
> Since you bring up that topic (Samba4 not recommended as a file server), I've been meaning to
> ask on this list for a while: Why?
>
> I installed Samba4 2 years ago next month.  I read then that recommendation in the wiki and
> took it literaly: not actual Samba shares.  I followed the advice and we have two other
> different servers acting as actual "classic" Samba file servers.  At the time, I did not take
> that recommendation to mean that hosting a mail server and the like were included.
>
> Therefore, I blithely went ahead and set up Samba4 as a full-on replacement for our retiring
> Windows SBS 2008 AD/DC.  That included AD authentication, mail server (with sendmail/dovecot
> replacing Exchange), Remote Desktop Connection (policy), redirected folders (certainly file
> server-like), DNS, DHCP, webmail, iCal calendar server ...  and probably a bunch of stuff I'm
> not thinking about at the moment.  When I figured out the various configs for the various
> services (not too hard, really, except for a long stretch trying to figure out Dovecot
> authentication), everything just worked, perfectly.  We've been running production for more than
> a year and a half with WIN7 workstations in user offices and a couple of experimental Linux
> domain member workstations.  We've never had a hiccup, never lost a file that I'm aware of and
> have had zero problems with Samba4 doing all this -- which is more than I can say for good 'ole
> SBS2008 in its day.
>
> All that said to demonstrate that we've been using Samba4 for supposedly "not recommended"
> purposes in a real production environment for quite a while.  Furthermore, outfits like Zentyal
> must be doing the same.
>
> So, to repeat the main question: Why is Samba4 not recommended for this sort of thing? I've
> not come across actual reasons. Maybe too bit-specific technical for this list, but I like
> someone to at least speculate on the reason. I'm curious.
>
> --Mark
>
> -----Original Message-----
>> To: samba at lists.samba.org
>> From: Rowland penny <rpenny at samba.org>
>> Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2016 22:13:43 +0100
>> Subject: Re: [Samba] sendmail getting domain\user as email userId
>>
> [delted]
>> As for the info you would like adding to the wiki, it used to be there,
>> but when the wiki was re-written, it was removed. The thinking seemed to
>> be, as samba doesn't recommend using the DC as a fileserver, it
>> shouldn't be there. Samba has been recommending not using the DC as a
>> fileserver since version 4 was first released, this was nearly 4 years
>> ago. Perhaps, due to the many changes since the first release, it is
>> time to reconsider this recommendation.
>>
>> Rowland