*nix for samba/fileservers?

colm_c

Any recommendations for a particular flavour of *nix for a standard issue file server?

It's literally going to be a samba box and nothing else apart from an rsync to an identical backup box.

I've used fedora core, Red Hat and CentOS before for servers but never found any real performance or advantages of one over the other.

The server will be sitting on a RAID-5 array if that makes any difference.

Any recommendations?

zAbbo

Gentoo would squeeze the performance if you're doing a full custom install.

Any server install of CentOS or Ubuntu would be fine.

colm_c

CentOS it is.

Explosive_Cornflake

Messing around with the mount settings, such as async and configuring the the smb.conf would yield more results that a particular OS could. Have fun!

ntlbell

Is this a production machine or for home use?

djmarkus

Suse. YAST FTW


EDIT
BTW if you wanted to use (stable) ZFS then i would maybe suggest you use solaris if your server is SMP

colm_c

ntlbell wrote: »

Is this a production machine or for home use?

Production in our small office - 20 users now, will be growing to 50 over it's lifespan. Won't be taking a huge load tbh, just after a nice zippy setup.

Solaris could be an option but I'm not familiar with it enough to go down that route just yet.

Khannie

CentOs ftw. If you're looking at using raid 5, I'd suggest the kernel level raid 5. Removes controller card dependency.

colm_c

I've already got the controller cards included in the servers (they came with the servers) - should I get rid of them in favour of the kernel raid 5?

Dero

I'd say CentOS too. Derived from RHEL, long life, easy to maintain wrt updates etc. I've set it up before in a small office environment as a Samba server (among other things) and it works fine.

Dero

colm_c wrote: »

I've already got the controller cards included in the servers (they came with the servers) - should I get rid of them in favour of the kernel raid 5?

Depends on what they are. If they're well supported hardware raid cards then you'd be better off keeping them.

SouperComputer

TBH one distro doesnt neccacarily offer more peformance over another, its all about the config, services etc etc. Even then the difference woud be marginal for your network. Unless the HW is not really up to spec anyway. Stick with a distro that has good support and that you are comfortable with.

I think looking in more detail at SAMBA will reap more benefits for you. Theres some pretty good books that get REALLY deep into SAMBA, its amazing how much you can do with with it.

Also google for SAMBA peformance and CPU utilisation guides. I remember reading a guide that averages the overhead per connection a while ago, very revealing stuff.

If you work with a lot of large files, XFS might be a good alternative to traditional ext peformance wise.

Also, if you are providing data to 50 nodes, your network structure is important, arguably more so than your server setup. Think backbones, VLANs and trunking with QOS where needed, if needed with managed switches for good measure.

colm_c

I'll be definitely looking into Samba, is the O'Reilly book any good?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Using-Samba-Gerald-Carter/dp/0596007698/

colm_c

Just did a google for:

SAMBA peformance and CPU utilisation guides

And got this thread!

Thats impressive.

ntlbell

colm_c wrote: »

I'll be definitely looking into Samba, is the O'Reilly book any good?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Using-Samba-Gerald-Carter/dp/0596007698/

The samba docs are very well written there should be no need to spend money on a book.

Take your time work out what you want to do and do it.

Khannie

You wouldn't need to get rid of the raid controllers. You could just use them in a non-raid way and have the kernel do the raiding. It does add computational overhead to the box and that's worth bearing in mind if the specs are low.

colm_c

The boxes are new dell servers - Xeon quad core's with 4GB of ram. So plenty of horsepower to spare for a fileserver! :rolleyes:

Explosive_Cornflake

Are the the dell PERC raid cards? AFAIK they don't do non raid mode, but I'm sure someone will be along any second to clear that up.
EDIT: s/not/non/

djmarkus

Hmm.. I would say Solaris would be the way to go for performance. And i'd download and compile samba using Sun's compiler. Might be a bit too much hassle for you though.

colm_c

Yeah - they've got the PERC cards.

Solaris seems like a lot of hassle for now.

SouperComputer

ntlbell wrote: »

The samba docs are very well written there should be no need to spend money on a book.

Take your time work out what you want to do and do it.

I disagree, yes theres lots of good documentation on SAMBA on the web. But that doesnt mean that a book that helps dilute all the info into one place is a bad thing.

I think somtimes, you can get more relevant knowledge in less time from a book, and of course you can then cross reference the online documentation.

colm_c wrote:

Just did a google for:

SAMBA peformance and CPU utilisation guides

And got this thread!

Thats impressive.

Haha, ive tried to search for the guide I read, granted it was three years ago or so but no luck so far. I really drilled down on the CPU/RAM utilistaion that you can expect and gave some case examples too. Keep searching, im sure its out there!

Again, Solaris, Gentoo, BSD, OSX server, RHL, Suse, AIX isnt going to matter a castlmaine XXXX most of your HD array, SAMBA config and your network traffic. If you are serious about peformance, these need to be looked at. Looks like thats where you are heading though. Go with whatever distro seems to have the most support for your Dell servers.

What switches do you have and what kind of files are being worked with on the network?

This is a very old guide, but its also short, might give you some ideas......

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/samba/chapter/book/appb.pdf

Dero

The PERC cards are supported by CentOS (well, Linux) out of the box. Can't see any good reason not to use them for the RAID.

Explosive_Cornflake

Dero wrote: »

The PERC cards are supported by CentOS (well, Linux) out of the box. Can't see any good reason not to use them for the RAID.

The only reason to give with mdadm over the PERC is that with the PERc you are tied to the card, so in the case of failure, you'd have to replace it witht he same one. In a production environment that shouldn't be an issue though with dell support.

colm_c

@SouperComputer - switches, we've just upgraded our main switch to a GB netgear smart switch (unmanaged). There is 3 other GB 8 port netgear switches on the LAN thats used for desks where there aren't enough ports for machines.

We still have the old 100MB planet managed one thats not being used. It's 8 years old and needed replacing but still works perfectly.

I never found any difference in performance with the small network they're on, would it be worth having the managed one on the LAN too? and connecting all servers to this?

ntlbell

SouperComputer wrote: »

I disagree, yes theres lots of good documentation on SAMBA on the web. But that doesnt mean that a book that helps dilute all the info into one place is a bad thing.

Meh, courses for horses etc with these things you tend to build up an army of docs that you can easily put in one easy place without forking out for a book

Lets not argue about reading from a web page or a book is more relevant.

ntlbell

getting back to it

have you looked at http://www.clarkconnect.com/

You could probably customize it a bit remove any daemons etc you don't need

colm_c

ntlbell wrote: »

getting back to it

have you looked at http://www.clarkconnect.com/

You could probably customize it a bit remove any daemons etc you don't need

It's overkill for our purposes, we have an Xserve running most of the network.

Red Alert

XServe or else FreeBSD - the default samba install is lovely and clean on FreeBSD.