[lug] Samba in business

[Kyle Moore]

I am considering replacing our Novell and Windows 2000 file servers with
samba on Linux. I'm stuck with Windows 2000 Active Directory and
Exchange (god help me) but would like to use a more stable, secure and
cost-effective solution where possible. 

The catch is this...I hate risk. Can a samba server reliably replace a
Windows file server? I'm not worried about stability of the server. What
I am more worried about is continued functionality. Does Samba
authenticate to Windows 2000 as well as it did with NT? Can it enforce
permissions and policies from Windows 2000? Can Microsoft just release a
patch for their desktop operating systems that suddenly makes samba not
work? Are there commercial solutions of samba on line as a file server?
What are your experiences?

I have a little over 200 users. Most of them are still on Windows 98 but
we are moving to Windows 2000. Right now everyone authenticates to
Novell and print and file services are provided through Novell as well.
We do have some people (most execs) that are ALSO on a Windows 2000
domain. I was given the responsibilities at this point. I want to get
everyone standardized and it is obvious upgrading Novell is not an
option (political reasons).

The "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" way to do this is migrate
everyone over to Windows 2000 domain and do everything through there. My
problem with this is that I know the headache that would be to maintain.

--
Kyle

--
Kyle Moore
Systems Administrator
Trust Company of America