samba - Feb 1999 - NT server, NT Gateway, Samba and .... ??

Yes, I love SAMBA product. However, I have a technical question for our
experts here. Does anyone knows any good software acts like NT  Gateway :
which allow the NT server to browse our UNIX file systems and also can make
our UNIX file system on the NT server shareable to its own local LAN
clients?

We have a large remote site with about 400 clients need to read our UNIX
file system data daily. Right now, I am setting up them to read our Unix
data via SAMBA, which installed on our AIX 4.1.5 Unix server. It works great
and customer are happy. However, customer want to put more users. This will
bring up following issues :
*	We have to upgrade our AIX server RAM in order to bring more samba
clients to our AIX server.
*	Our enterprise Unix server are treated more like a LAN sever to
them, which will bring more daily samba related daily administration jobs to
my daily Unix administration works. It is inconvenient.
*	

Based on that, I am thinking to set up a NT server at the customer local
site to centralized the SAMBA clients. This will make its own local LAN
clients only authorize to its own site NT server instead of individually to
log into our AIX server. In order to mount our UNIX file system to NT server
and then it can share this network resource to its own local clients, the NT
server either can use a special gateway software I am hunting for or use
SAMBA if it is applicable for NT.  Currently,  I don't know who have make
this kind product available. Or, some expert here can tell me what should I
do.

I used a Netware Gateway software before, but the NFS/ Novell IPX
combination performance for our clients is unacceptable to them. SMB
performance is much better on WAN likewise. That is how we brought samba in
two year ago. However, as customer grows, a problem come down like this make
me to search another product be needed to put a intermediate gateway between
our AIX server and window clients.

Anyone has suggestions to this problems ? Any response will be greatly
appreciated !

Stephen  Wu
EDS OMS
Tel :    (248)696-1413 / [8-366]
Fax :   (248)696-1804
Email:  Stephen.Wu-EDS@EDS.COM

I am not quite sure what you want the gateway to save you in labor.  But you
might buy a PC with a large amount of RAM and run Linux on it.  This box
could NFS mount the AIX shares and distribute the files and manage the
security.

If you use the script found in Jerry Carter's FAQ about NT domains
(http://www.samba.org), you can create a /etc/passwd file from the PDC at
the remote site.  Then you can add the SAMBA machine to the PDC domain
(security = domain, detailed in said FAQ).

This machine would be placed at that site, and the only traffic you see
would be NFS over the WAN.

If you were hoping to save the traffic and say keep a separate repository at
the remote site, you might look into Andrew Tridgell's other major
accomplishment: rdist.

--
William Stuart (william@hae.com)
"...and that's why I suggest putting your IP router in a suppository
configuration"  --Dilbert 1/8/1999
> -----Original Message-----
> From: samba@samba.org [mailto:samba@samba.org]On Behalf Of Wu, Stephen
> (Aco Service Co.)
> Sent: Tuesday, February 09, 1999 11:55 AM
> To: Multiple recipients of list
> Subject: NT server, NT Gateway, Samba and .... ??
>
[...snipped... see arcives...]
>
> Stephen  Wu
> EDS OMS
> Tel :    (248)696-1413 / [8-366]
> Fax :   (248)696-1804
> Email:  Stephen.Wu-EDS@EDS.COM
>
>
>
>
>

You wrote:
|	. However, customer want to put more users. This will
| bring up following issues :
|       We have to upgrade our AIX server RAM in order to bring more
samba
| clients to our AIX server.

	Samba usually bottlenecks on disk i/o: if you add more users,
	you may well need more disk & swap, but not necessarily more
	ram.  

	How many disks and scsi controllers do you have, which model
	RS/6000 and how many ethernets of what speed do you have?
	I can plug those into a simple model and predict your
	likely bottlenecks...

|       Our enterprise Unix server are treated more like a LAN sever to
| them, which will bring more daily samba related daily administration
jobs to
| my daily Unix administration works. It is inconvenient.

	I'm sorry, that last sentence doesn't mean anything to me.
	Could you expand on it a bit? 
      
--dave
-- 
David Collier-Brown,  | Always do right. This will gratify some people
185 Ellerslie Ave.,   | and astonish the rest.        -- Mark Twain
Willowdale, Ontario   | http://java.science.yorku.ca/~davecb
Work: (905) 477-0437 Home: (416) 223-8968 Email: davecb@canada.sun.com