[ale] Advice requested on samba solutions.

[Michael B. Trausch]

On 07/20/2014 10:49 PM, David Millians wrote:
> I've used samba and AD together. I just don't know if:
> A) anybody had just made something like this work with wins servers and lmhosts/hosts (it didn't the other day in limited testing)
> B) anybody has gone the SMB 4.0 route and made a PDC and would swear they aren't ever going back

This largely depends on business requirements---of course, given 
unlimited time, anything is possible.  There is enough implemented in 
Samba 4.x that it is possible to achieve Microsoft-less servers (as long 
as you don't have requirements which depend on *other* Microsoft 
components, such as IIS or any of the Microsoft platform-specific 
proprietary applications which will run on neither Wine nor Mono).

Bird's eye view:

  * Migrating from an existing AD infrastructure to Samba 4 is
    relatively easy, since it can replicate back and forth.  I need to
    do testing with newer versions of Windows, but I'm lacking in
    licenses on those.  I can say that it's really easy to migrate from
    Win2k and Win2k3 to Samba 4.  It should be relatively easy to
    migrate from 2k8 to Samba 4.  I cannot say anything about 2k12
    because they changed several things, but it should be at least possible.
  * You'll need to test, test, test, test!
  * If you have _applications_ which run on the Windows Server (e.g., if
    the Windows Server is providing more than infrastructure services),
    this can be a problem.  Some applications can be migrated to run on
    a Linux server using Wine or Mono.  (Older native-code applications
    can typically be run under Wine; ASP.NET or applications which rely
    on the CLR will require Mono.)  Each application must be
    *thoroughly* tested by its actual end-users to ensure that all
    functionality used in production is tested.

Permissions can sometimes be an issue, but once you have the initial 
setup there complete (you'll need to internalize an understanding of 
Windows ACL --> POSIX ACL mapping), you'll be fine.

There is a module for Samba now, too, that will use btrfs for 
implementing things like volume shadow copy service and so forth. I have 
not played with this yet, however I plan to do so (hopefully) soon.

     --- Mike

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