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Samba Success in the Enterprise?

Posted by Cliff on from the asking-for-your-experiences dept.

gunnk asks: "We've deployed a Samba server here to replace some aging Novell Netware boxes. It works great: fast, secure, stable. However, we have one VIP that feels that Samba is 'amateur' software and that we should be buying Windows servers. I've been searching with little success for large Samba deployments in Enterprise environments. Anyone out there care to share stories of places that are happily running large Samba installations for their file servers? Or not so happy, for that matter — better to be informed!"

4 of 149 comments (clear)

  1. Another big company... by rossifer · · Score: 4, Informative

    AOL/Time-Warner enormously relies on linux and Samba all over the place. This may or may not help your case depending on what your boss thinks of AOL as a company...

    Ross

  2. We serve about 1000 computers with it by caseih · · Score: 5, Informative

    I have several samba servers that serve 3000 users and almost 1000 computers, from Windows 98 to XP. It works well and only ever gives us problems when LDAP (OpenLDAP is tempermental) has a problem. We've used Samba since the 2.2 days in production. We're looking forward to Samba 4 to get ActiveDirectory-style domains. NT domains work fine, but are clunky. Only our lab machines are on a domain. The rest of the machines either just have local accounts with network drives mapped, or have pGina logins that map the drives for the user.

    For many enterprises, Samba isn't enough. They require the management aspects of ActiveDirectory. Fortunately Samba 4 will do all that. Plus I have yet to integrate Vista into our system. Promises to be a nightmare I think.

    This stigma your VP has is quite common, and no amount of evidence or arguing will change his mind, likely. Stubborn ignorance. The world is slowly changing, but I think it's as the truly ignorant people die off.

  3. Enterprise scale deployment by SWood · · Score: 5, Informative

    We have a project inside IBM called the Global Storage Architecture that provides enterprise file system service. There are currently over 95K users on GSA with over 143TB of used space, spread across 39 installations on 5 continents.

    There are several different ways to connect to GSA File depending on the platform and application, but Samba is used for connecting the Windows clients, of which there are tens of thousands. In addition to general office productivity, many of these clients are doing hardware design and software development.

    You can read an account of GSA File in appendix B of the Implementing NFSv4 in the Enterprise: Planning and Migration Strategies Redbook. The appendix is oriented toward the NFS aspects of the service, but you can still get a good idea of what is going on.

    http://publib-b.boulder.ibm.com/abstracts/sg246657 .html

  4. Even better by Dolda2000 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Instead of quoting specific companies, how about pointing to that well known study which shows that Samba is more than twice as fast as Windows Server 2003 for SMB serving?