<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">All,</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">The time has finally come to ditch our Micro$haft file servers as another increment towards weaning ourselves of our Windows habit. For now, I have to keep Active Directory in the picture, although I have managed to reduce the AD server footprint from 18 servers down to 4. Corporate mindset issues demand small steps.</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">Question: Is it better to go with an "appliance solution" such as FreeNAS vs. distro+Samba? </div>
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<br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">I played around with FreeNAS a bit and while it has great automation of things like AD integration (which I will need to do for now) and a great web interface, it seems less flexible when it comes to e.g. backup options. It seems a simple Ubuntu/Samba box gives me many options on how to handle our daily backups to USB, while FreeNAS can potentially close doors to me, or at least make things harder. That's just one example that I ran into.</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">So, I'd like to hear from you about experiences/pros-cons of appliance-type options vs the manual way. I've tried both at a simple test level. They both seem viable and I really want to like FreeNAS, but just cannot seem to get comfortable with it - little glitches seem to pop up that have the potential to be major sticking points. So right now I'm leaning towards distro+Samba.</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">Feel free to suggest other options besides the two mentioned here. Whatever solution I deploy I have to be able to use Windows ACL's on the shares ... for now.</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">cheers</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">ed</div><div><br></div>-- <br><div dir="ltr">
Edward Holcroft | Madsen Kneppers & Associates Inc.<br>
11695 Johns Creek Parkway, Suite 250 | Johns Creek, GA 30097<br>O (770) 446-9606 | M (770) 630-0949</div>
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