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Samba Beats Windows IT Week Labs Test Results
jmhowitt writes "Tests by IT Week Labs
show the latest version of the open-source Samba file and print server software is 2.5 times faster than Windows Server 2003 in the same role.
The news comes as many firms are grappling with the consequences of Microsoft ending support for NT4, coupled with uncertainty about when Microsoft will next update Windows. The performance difference between Windows Server 2003 and Samba 3 has increased dramatically compared with Samba 2 and Windows 2000 Server."
However, even if it's quicker than Windows Server 2003, NFS still seems to do a great deal better on my home network for the same things. For example, I typically get 10%-20% of the transfer with SMB as I do with NFS.
So I don't recommend using Samba at all unless you're looking for Windows compatibility.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Now where are the numbers to back it up?
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
I read a while ago about some of the SAMBA developers having a better grasp of how the services / protocol all tie together, than the M$ employees doing the development. Most of the current M$ team inherited code from the older versions of the OS, and they are merely building on top of this codebase. The SAMBA team have had to reverse engineer the protocol. So it seems to make sense therefore, that should you understand it better, you can sqeeze more out of the service on the whole. It therefore appears that it can only get better and better as they develop .. .. And with it being opensource, bugs are easier to find ...
I also don't know how many developers are on the samba team in total (contributors / developers), but I would almost start assuming more than the manpower assigned by M$ to this area of code for Windows
Since when would it be a more secure choice to use a Windows based fileserver instead of a Linux one?
Dunno if anyone else noticed, but when I clicked on the article, a "VNUNet Special" opened in the background, which was an advertisement or promotion under another name. It was formatted just like all other VNUNet articles, but was clearly a Microsoft sales pitch for W2003, complete with a flash advert on the right, and one at the top, both for W2003.
Interestingly unbiased, when clicking on a Samba article...
jer
We may be human, but we're still animals
- Steve Vai
I know this is more of a AskSlashdot question...
My impression of Linux/Unix systems has always been that each host has it's own set of user accounts and if I have 3 hosts it means that I have to maintain 3 sets of passwords. With NT4/Win2000, my servers share a common userspace so that you only have to maintain a single user account. Is there something under Linux/Unix that does this?
How easy is it to drop a Samba server into an existing Win2000 network? Our Novell 5 server is starting to show it's age (file/printing only) and I'm starting to wonder whether to move to a later version of Novell, switch to Linux/Samba, use a NAS device, or just load up another Win2000 server.
(With the security issues this year with Windows, however, I'm not sure I want to make Windows our main file server.)
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
I'm a networking, sysadmin, programmer (mostly programmer) consultant for small businesses in Sarasota, Florida. Most of my customers are small businesses (less than 12 people) and are looking for ways to keep costs down.
After proposing a new 2.4GHz server with Win2k3, they were sticker shocked and decided to not hire me for the job. Then one of THEM mentioned Linux (which I love and hav used for 5 years). I told them that I use Linux in my software development practice, and we could consider this as an alternative for File Server (Samba), centralized security (ldap) and backups (Mandrake backup utility). We're also using VNC (realvnc.org) for remote desktop. I can also easily SSH and do remote X session from my office, or use VNC.
It's been up for a week now, and they LOVE IT! It's fast, flexible, and you cant beat the price. And I've learned my Lesson to be mention Linux even when they specifically ask for Windows (I'm not a pushy sales person, but I do believe an presenting choices to my customers)
They wanted to outsource their IT department (the owner doesn't ever want to worry or think about their IT issues), so we made a deal that allows me to keep their systems updated, but doesn't force him to hire an on-site IT person.
Speed was NOT an issue for the Samba server, since they mostly use MS Office (win xp pro workstations) documents. However, this was a great step for them to embrace and support open source software (I donate to several projects in turn).
I hope this story might help somebody who is considering doing something similar. I'm happy to answer any questions about our experiences.
-Scott James
Suncoast Linux - Sarasota, FL
If security is your worry, use ssh on a reasonable OS in any size environment. As the orignial poster said, Samba is only useful when you have brain dead M$ client machines. If you have a real OS on the desktop, you don't need M$ protocals. Samba, as good as it is, implements M$ holes, so that M$ transmitted diseases from your client boxes can fill up or wipe out your shares after calling home and giving away everything you care to keep to yourself. Security fails with the weakest link and that will be those nasty old M$ PCs as the Half Life people recently discovered.
Real agencies worried about security have gotten away from Microsoft. I spoke with a Federal Employee last week who told me about her locked down Linux laptop. It did what she needed it to do. Real information management comes with real hardware and software ownership. Real software ownership only comes through free software. If you are running M$, someone else owns your hardware and your data and you agreed to it with the EULA.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
also it makes for easy detection of worms or virus spreading. I detect the latest spreading on my samba servers at least 20 hours before the knuckleheads in corperate have the first clue that something is up. and using simple, existing log tools for linux make it happen.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Wait a minute. The BL10 is a Blade server.
Who would use a Blade for a file server?
Something doesn't make sense about that choice. Why not an Proliant ML530 or ML570? Something with RAID, an I/O bus and internal expansion? The BL10 only comes with a single ATA 40 Gig drive, no RAID... and you can't even hook it up to an external fibre array storage box like EMC.
That just seems like a really bizarre choice, almost makes me wonder if they had an ulterior motive.
Absolutely. Talk to anyone in a CAD environment. We have servers with over 4GB of RAM and have 1Gig Network cards (both client and server side). We realized speed increases on the client end every upgrade of the server, increased RAM and higher speed network cards. Then again we may be 'different' we have 100's of thousands of parts that are opened in each assembly.
CUPS rules in my opinion simply because I can share certain HP printers that their own MS drivers can't...heh. I have an HP 710 and in their how-to's it says to share it you need to load a generic HP Laserjet driver (which disables the color, fax, scanner, etc). I still can't use the scanner/fax but I can print in color over the network. Very cool for free software.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
You're right that for a typical workgroup raw performance doesn't much matter -- either NT or Linux+SAMBA would be "fast enough."
Where this does matter is to someone:
1) Making a decision between NT and Linux+SAMBA. It's great for the OSS alternative to not only be better strategically, but faster and cheaper. You'd have to work pretty hard to justify why you'd pay more (forever) for a slower fileserver that's less secure and requires you to do more paperwork and maintenance.
2) Trying to save money. A 2.5x performance advantage on the same hardware can also mean perfectly good performance on 1/2.5th of the hardware. So instead of buying a NT and a "2Ghz fileserver with fast ethernet and half-a-gig of RAM" you can get the same performance out of Linux+SAMBA on an old 800 MHz PC with 128 MB RAM that you have lying around, or which can be bought for almost nothing compared to the macho server required to get the same performance out of NT.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
I heard before (in the w2k days) that on a given piece of hardware, Samba ran twice as fast as w2k file sharing. When 2003 was first being touted a few months ago, MS said that they improved file serving so it was "faster than the competition", which means it's as fast as Samba (if not faster.) And now Samba is 2.5x faster again? That's more than a little unbelievable.
What I'd like to see would be an open, month-long contest, with 3 boxes--say, a single P4 with a couple drives, a dual-xeon+RAID, and some huge mother connected to a fiberchannel SAN. Make two identical copies of each box, then let MS tweak one set as far as it will go and let the Samba team tweak another. Make it a month long and open so each team can publish their results, get more opinions, etc etc etc., until everyone on both sides is convinced that the whole contest is as fair as can be and that neither side had an advantage. Then, see who won. Otherwise, we'll just keep seeing what we saw today and every other test--people come out of the woodwork claiming MS fixed this, or the Linux/Samba-biased testers didn't know how to tweak that, etc etc etc. Once it's this open and agreed upon, it wouldn't matter if the contest were funded by Bill Gates or Jeremy Allison. Until then, I'll just keep ignoring these tests.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
That doesn't make much sense. A Blade isn't a cost justifiable solution for a small business, as you don't just buy one of them... you've got to buy the whole rack and supporting hardware to plug them in. A small Proliant ML would be far far cheaper.
And why would you bother benchmarking a file server for 15-20 seats? We used to server 500 users off a 486DX33 running Novell back in the day. 15-20 seats doesn't constitute a need for benchmarking, you could use anything.
I guess my point is, this hardware seems odd, like it was chosen because Linux would look better on it for some reason. I want to see further details and try to reproduce this benchmark myself.
The base SMB or Server Message Block protocol is not the problem. It is as usual, all the MS extensions and divergences from this that are NOT documented publicly or published that make reverse engineering needed.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
Try working as a developer on a large corporate software product. An average build in around a gig a pop, and you either have people "backing" to them, or copying them wholesale. Add in the fact that these patterns are also really bursty (based on build publications) and you are talking serious overhead.
:) )
We don't use Samba as the primary fileserver, but the majority of the windows developers use a Samba mirror (or gateway) to the backing tree.
If copying a build goes from 20 minutes to 10 minutes, and then you multiply this across the number of users, you get a signifigant time savings. (Especially for things like build publications, because the temptation to waste time "while the build copies" is pretty high.