Hello, we have here a SAMBA Server with Shares for worldwide Projects. Now the problem is the slow access from some branches. We have now the idea to use a CIFS Proxy or a Cluster to provide the files localy. The Idea: The main samba server holds all files and all user information. The CIFS Proxy in the remote location have a copy of all files and a copy of the user database. If a user open a file the file will be locked on all servers (main server and all cifs proxy). If the user write a file (new file or file change) the file will be still locked until the file is written on all servers. It hears simple, but there are many problems. What happens, when the connection go down, the main server due to maintanace will be shut off, a client dies while he edit a file... Is there a working solution available (Samba3)? Otmar
Hi,> > The main samba server holds all files and all user information. The > CIFS Proxy in the remote location have a copy of all files and a copy > of the user database. > > If a user open a file the file will be locked on all servers (main > server and all cifs proxy). If the user write a file (new file or file > change) the file will be still locked until the file is written on all > servers.This sounds really neat and I would love to get something similar running on our network. A lot of the issues that would need to be addressed for this to work are discussed in the high availability chapter of the samba-howto. To the best of my knowledge samba doesnt support anything quite like this (yet?). It can do DFS which can be used to make files appear to be on a local server however I dont believe it does any form of caching. A while ago I considered using Coda between servers and then using samba to share out the data to the clients. Coda already addresses many of the issues you would face such as offline operation and change conflicts. At the time I didn't feel that setup would be stable enough for my production environment. Maybe in the future I will look into it again. -- Michael Heydon
Hello Volker and "List"> This is exactly the same as discussed a couple of weeks ago:for me it seems that cluster support in samba gets more and more important. i know that there?s already a lot of work done and in progress. and also it?s really a big challenge to implement these HA-services. i really want to speak in the name of the list regarding this topic and want to thank everybody for putting so much work in this "sub-project"!!! for me and my job it?s really important to have clustered samba instances running on SAN-/ or other clusterfilesystems. i?m looking forward to SambaXP which will hopefully present some information about this topic (i know there?s a talk about clustered samba). thx! micha