1

Hi there,

We are creating a new file server and I was thinking about trying out SAMBA. I have some limited experince with SAMBA, but have never done anything in a production enviornment. I am interested in learning more about linux and this would make me learn more. We are completely Windows based, we run on Hyper-V and use AD. I was wondering what troubles I could run into making the switch and the pros and cons of switching.

Thanks for your time!

6 Spice ups
2

Sounds like a lot of work. I always support linux, but since you are a windows network not sure if it would be a good business move or not.

2 Spice ups
3

Samba4 is really powerful and offers a lot of good stuff. The two challenges that people generally face in doing this is integrating with your existing directory services and not having NTFS and people are used to NTFS and don’t realize how much it does.

1 Spice up
4

Why use a production file server to learn on. Little upside, big downside.

Fire up a spare computer to learn on.

5

Probably not, but it’s exactly what I did, only with SAMBA on Ubuntu 12.04 server.

It took a while, but I learned about editing .conf files and configuring them to connect an Ubuntu server to my network.

Also look at winbind for domain joining / authentication. Pros: Free, experience in linux and plenty of documentation.

Cons: not knowing how to do it already. A lot of the documentation doesn’t apply to this application of Samba, so you’ll need

to dig for it ( but most of the stuff I found translated over to my ubuntu install anyway). Doesn’t make your coffee for you.

1 Spice up
6

I would be nervous about using a production file server myself. Do you have a test box to use? We are also operating on a Windows environment, but what we have trouble with (from time to time) is our AD server. Apparently someone before my time of employment here hosed it up and even though we worked a lot of bugs out it still acts up once in a while.

7

Start small. Maybe fire one up for IT files, or backups, or something not directly accessed by individual users. This is one of those areas Linux is lacking compared to Windows. You have to get creative to keep the management from getting away from in comparison. The biggest advantages are it’s free and runs on a toaster oven.

It never hurts to try things in a non-production VM in your spare time.

3 Spice ups