Linux File Server For Windows Network?

[LarryG]

I have some preliminary questions about setting up a Linux file server for a Windows network.

Our little architectural shop uses a peer-to-peer Windows network. It looks like we're going to be hiring another person soon, and we are up against Windows' limit of 10 concurrrent log-ons on the machine that acts as our server.

I know nothing of Linux beyond the fact it exists. But as I understand it, we could set up a Linux box as our file server for our files and access them over the network from our Windows-running workstations -- correct?

Assuming that is correct (and I'm pretty sure it is), does Linux have any similar limits on the number of concurrent log-ins?

How difficult, and how expensive, will it be to set the network up? Okay, I realize that's a loaded question ... I'm just trying to get an idea of how hard it will be for a reasonably Windoze-savvy small-network admin (me) to get up and running.

Please remember that I'm a complete Linux noob and go easy on the jargon ... I'll no doubt have more questions but at this point, this is just a feasibility study. Thanks!

[dbhost]

Okay let's hit the ground running with some very basic concepts...

#1. No Linux doesn't neccesarily have a built in limit to the number of concurrent connections. That is a licensing issue, in a peer to peer Windows network. Your limits would be the network itself, and you with just barely 10 users are in no danger of tripping over that limit.


Now to your main thrust...

"How difficult, and how expensive, will it be to set the network up? Okay, I realize that's a loaded question ... I'm just trying to get an idea of how hard it will be for a reasonably Windoze-savvy small-network admin (me) to get up and running."

You are quite right, that is a loaded question, because you didn't state very clearly what your objective is. It's kind of like saying...

"How difficult, or expensive is it to build a woodworking project?"

We need more details than that to give you a better idea of where you want to go with this, but let me make some assumptions here...

#1. You want to utilize domain control and single sign on.
#2. You are using Windows XP workstations.
#3. You have no aspirations toward being the guy running a large enterprise network with Linux.
#4. You want a Free as in both speech, and beer Linux distribution as opposed to paying a subscription / support contract fee.
#5. You don't necessarily want a big company to blame if something goes wrong, you just want it to work...

Not that Vista or Windows 7 are out of the question, but they require some tweaks on the Windows workstations to work properly due to some registry side hashing that is done on those versions...

You can easily configure any Linux distribution, and even Mac OS-X (actually almost any UNIX) to behave as an NT style domain controller, you would need to have the SAMBA packages installed, which you would then configure per your needs.

Windows Vista and Windows 7 both anticipate an Active Directory domain, which SAMBA does not mimic fully yet, but there are well publicized registry edits that can be easily deployed to make these versions work on the NT4 style domain, no muss, no fuss. You'll be working on the host to add it to the domain anyway.

Some distributions are easier to work with than others. But that ease of working with them comes at a cost... Mandriva, and Ubuntu, of which Ubuntu is the more popular, are both extremely easy to administer, with easy SAMBA configuration utilities, where as the Red Hat recompile distributions such as Scientific Linux and CentOS are both more enterprise oriented, and while they lack the point and click ease of configuration, are far better documented, and flexible in configuration...

Since you mention you are Windows network savvy, I would assume you have things like batch files etc... figured out, if you can figure that out, you can figure out vi the books manual SAMBA configuration, it really isn't that tough...

IF it were me setting up a SAMBA server for a small office network such as yours, and at one time a long time ago it was, I would pick the Red Hat recompile distribution, and get a good book on Red Hat specifically, and another on SAMBA. Do some speed reading, and toy with the settings in a non mission critical environment...

Cost wise you would be out a bit of training material, time, bandwidth, and blank media for getting your linux distribution, and then appropriate hardware to run as a server...

AT a MINIMUM hardware wise, I would go with a barebones 64 bit quad core system with 8GB RAM, don't worry, I recently got one with 2TB of disks AND Windows 7 Professional for about $500.00... To that I would add a SATA RAID controller, OR an external iSCSI shelf with a TB or so to meet your storage needs, configured in a RAID 5 to give you data protection in the event of a drive failure, AND some sort of backup system sized to back up your company data...

If you want more in depth discussion on this, PM me with your email address... I am more than happy to help...

[LarryG]

Dave, PM on the way (or about to be). Thanks!

[vaking]

How much space do you need? Are you aiming for multiple disks with redundancy (RAID)?
If your needs are simple - you might want to think of avoiding Windows or Linux servers altogether. There is an option of installing a small appliance that serves as file server. Now even some cable routers support that - they provide ability to plug external USB drives and make them visible from the network. A specialized appliance is easier to deal with than configuring your own server and maintaining it forever.
I work in a very large network environment - one of the largest in the world. In our environment most critical functions are performed by dedicated appliances. They are more cost effective than servers. Servers are mostly application servers where no appliances exist. For me - if there is a choice to use a server or an appliance - appliance is usually preferred.

[sparkeyjames]

If all your really after is a file server to enable better project centralization then just about any spare computer you have hanging around with space for a raid 5 setup will work. CentOS is your best bet. It is Redhat with just the logo's removed and any (not much) copyrighted stuff stripped out. Linux based samba (windows file sharing) to the best of my knowledge has the concurrent connections as a configurable setting.

[pelligrini]

I'm with vaking, sounds like an appliance would suit your needs. If you're just looking for file storage there's some fairly inexpensive NAS boxes available. Do you need to have different levels of access restrictions or is everything wide open?

We're running MS Small Business Server at our little office, mainly for Exchange. I also have two of my own servers there for file storage.They're right by my desk and they are really loud. Pretty long in the tooth too, one is an ALR 6x6 (Six Socket-8 CPUs). I've been considering powering them off and getting a NAS box.

[LarryG]

All,

Okay, it may be that my thread title asks the wrong question. Let's try another tack:

On our little peer-to-peer network, we are running up against Windows' limit of 10 concurrent user log-ons on the machine that acts our server. We need to increase this to allow at least one more user. But since there may be still more new users and/or laptops in our future, let's say I need to increase this from 10 to 15, or even 20 to 25.

What is the simplest, most bulletproof way of doing this?

It doesn't necessarily have to be the cheapest way, although naturally money is always a concern. But we're all about doing architecture, not about being on the cutting edge of computer technology. Any solution we choose needs to be easy to implement, and it has to work.

So what's the best choice?

Dave: your five assumptions are right on the money.

vaking: I am aware of NAS devices -- is that what you mean by "appliance"? I am ruling nothing out at this stage, but my cursory research of inexpensive NAS boxes turned up a lot of negative user reviews, pretty much across the board (i.e., regardless of brand name). I'm not sufficiently familiar with this technology to determine whether the complaints are anything that would matter to us.

Erik: we do have different levels of permissions for some users, and ideally would need to retain that capability. (The files involved could be password-protected, if necessary.)

Basically, all we need is a shared disk drive for our data files that can be accessed simultaneously by more than 10 people, and that can be backed up overnight by some method.

[sparkeyjames]

All,

Okay, it may be that my thread title asks the wrong question. Let's try another tack:

On our little peer-to-peer network, we are running up against Windows' limit of 10 concurrent user log-ons on the machine that acts our server. We need to increase this to allow at least one more user. But since there may be still more new users and/or laptops in our future, let's say I need to increase this from 10 to 15, or even 20 to 25.

What is the simplest, most bulletproof way of doing this?

It doesn't necessarily have to be the cheapest way, although naturally money is always a concern. But we're all about doing architecture, not about being on the cutting edge of computer technology. Any solution we choose needs to be easy to implement, and it has to work.

So what's the best choice?

Dave: your five assumptions are right on the money.

vaking: I am aware of NAS devices -- is that what you mean by "appliance"? I am ruling nothing out at this stage, but my cursory research of inexpensive NAS boxes turned up a lot of negative user reviews, pretty much across the board (i.e., regardless of brand name). I'm not sufficiently familiar with this technology to determine whether the complaints are anything that would matter to us.

Erik: we do have different levels of permissions for some users, and ideally would need to retain that capability. (The files involved could be password-protected, if necessary.)

Basically, all we need is a shared disk drive for our data files that can be accessed simultaneously by more than 10 people, and that can be backed up overnight by some method.

Linux Redhat or CentOS on just about any box that will handle newer SATA drives along with a CDWRITER/DVD burner to backup the files. The only problem after the hardware is to setup the SAMBA file sharing. For protection against hard drive failure a Linux software raid mirror setup (2 hard drives). Make sure to have a gigabyte switch and interfaces in all computers this speeds up network file transfers. That's about as low as you can go on the hardware end and still get backup ability and some hardware failure protection.

Do you want automatic backups or manual?

A file server does not need to be a newer machine. Just for ease of purchasing the hard drives a computer with SATA hard drive controller should be used.

[LarryG]

For protection against hard drive failure a Linux software raid mirror setup (2 hard drives).

I have no experience with RAID. Say I walk into the office one morning and discover that one of these two hard drives has failed. What, if anything, do I need to do to get everyone working? What kind of downtime will there be to replace the defective drive?

Do you want automatic backups or manual?

Automatic if at all possible. Also, I greatly prefer the backup to simply be a second copy of all files, in their native formats. In fact I would say this is a non-negotiable point. I've been burned in the past by revisions to backup software that made it impossible to retrieve an older file that was backed up using some compressed, proprietary format. We currently use a program called Second Copy to copy all our data files, overnight, across the network to drives on other machines. I'm perfectly happy with this arrangement and want to keep it. This part of our system ain't broke, and needs no fixing. We are, however, thinking about supplementing this with an online backup service so we will have a safe copy of our files if the building burns down.

A file server does not need to be a newer machine. Just for ease of purchasing the hard drives a computer with SATA hard drive controller should be used.

Understood, but all the old boxes I have laying around are IDE only. I suppose I could slap a new motherboard into one of them, however.

[pelligrini]

I have no experience with RAID. Say I walk into the office one morning and discover that one of these two hard drives has failed. What, if anything, do I need to do to get everyone working? What kind of downtime will there be to replace the defective drive?

RAID is easy. Hardware RAID is a lot better than software IME. I like setting my arrays up with a spare drive (or two) already installed. Most of my SCSI controllers will automatically use the spare if there is a failure. Most any decent RAID configuration would have little or no downtime for a failed drive. Two of my servers have hot swap bays for drives. Usually don't even have to reboot. Mirrored or Parity configurations were designed to handle a drive failure. Striping will get you some speed, but it increases the chances for catastrophic failures.

We used to use tape drives for backups here, but we've outgrown them. I have a few USB drives that I will rotate though. I'll rotate them out every week with the latest swap going home with me.

You probably could use one of your old boxes and get a SATA RAID controller card. Just make sure you've got enough power for everything.

[LarryG]

We used to use tape drives for backups here, but we've outgrown them. I have a few USB drives that I will rotate though. I'll rotate them out every week with the latest swap going home with me.

Same here on tape ... we dropped that technology when the 4GB tapes we were using were no longer adequate to hold everything.

We do essentially the same thing as you WRT the USB drives. One copy of our backup goes to a USB drive connected to a machine that does little more than house the config software for our network copier/printer. There are two USB drives that stay on the premises and are rotated weekly, assuming I remember to do it. A second backup copy goes to a USB drive connected directly to the file server. Again there are two drives; these are rotated daily and one goes home with me every night. Still, we're considering online backup, partly to make things a little simpler (no need to switch or tote the USB drives), partly so we could all access our files from anywhere we have an Internet connection.

[sparkeyjames]

Three scenarios for you to consider.

1) You could still use Second Copy except now you'd use it across the network.
Backup all the files in the SAMBA (WIndows) shares directly to a USB hard drive connected
to the computer that is running Second Copy. Downside is it takes longer across a
network.

2) You could also have one or several USB drives connected
to the file server itself and use RSYNC (a file backup program used extensively in the Linux Unix world) to back up the files to the USB drive with NO compression and in their native formats. RSYNC can be used running concurrently with SAMBA so that files that get changed can be backed up almost as fast as they are changed. This relieves the necessity to wait for a backup to complete so you can unplug the USB hard drive and take if off premises. There is a GUI interface for RSYNC but you must add it on to your system. RSYNC itself is included with every Linux distribution. RSYNC could be run by cron (see #3) if using as a one off every day or as a continuous daemon if your using it to keep running backups in sync with the Windows shared files. RSYNC has the capability of only backing up files that have been changed. So you make one full backup of all files then as changes are made RSYNC keeps the changes up to date. Downside RSYNC needs to be setup by a person VERY familiar with RSYNC in order to make it truly effective. Using multiple backup drives on one computer means you need more horsepower.

3) Again with a USB drive connected directly to the file server. Use what is called CRON to make a backup to the USB hard drive at a specific time every day or once per week or every other day. Cron is a program that is included with EVERY Linux distribution I setup cron entries all the time they are easy and work well with copying files at specific times to specific devices. A short shell script run at say 5pm or whatever time you want.
If the drive isn't connected when the script is set to run it will just exit and wait for the next time. Downside you need someone to write the backup script. Someone familiar with how USB hard drives mount into the system so that the script can find the drive.

1 terabyte USB hard drives are at or just under $100 these days.

As an added extra benefit of using Linux it would be rather immune to any Windows viruses or malware that might creep into your Windows based user computers. Downside since they are still shared files a Windows malicious virus or malware could still delete the files on the server.
But not on the backup drives.

I agree with using a hardware based raid card for fault tolerance in the hard drive storage system. I just mentioned the Linux software raid as an inexpensive alternative since it come with every Linux distribution. Several SATA hardware raid cards are available the downside is that they are not that cheap. Hard drive hot swapping is somewhat difficult to implement under Linux without second party software and requires an expert to both set it up and use it.

4) Wanna hire me to implement this? After Linux is installed on the computer and networking setup and connected. I can do the Linux software stuff over the internet. Hardware would be your baby.

[pelligrini]

4) Wanna hire me to implement this? After Linux is installed on the computer and networking setup and connected. I can do the Linux software stuff over the internet. Hardware would be your baby.

That's not a bad idea. Farm out the headscratching and get back to drawing. Unless you really want to learn it all.

[LarryG]

4) Wanna hire me to implement this? After Linux is installed on the computer and networking setup and connected. I can do the Linux software stuff over the internet. Hardware would be your baby.

I won't say No. I will say that the partners look first to me if something breaks, and because of that (and because too of my basic nature) I don't like to have anything in the building that I've not set up myself so I'll understand how it works. But as I say ... I won't say No. This is all still in the exploratory stage; anything is possible.

Which brings me to ... am I/we overlooking the obvious here? I just checked New Egg, and they have MS Small Business Server Essentials, which allows up to 25 users, for ~$400. For better or worse, we're a Windows shop; I already understand Windows peer-to-peer networking. We don't use, or need, Exchange. Would SBS perhaps be the most painless solution? Is there any other software we would need to buy, such as licenses for the client machines, or is the server software all we need?

Or, to put it another way, why WOULDN'T we want to run MS SBS?

[sparkeyjames]

If you have to be responsible for it. Stick with what you know. I just typed all that in to give you an idea of what you would be needing if selecting a Linux system. There are commercial backup software packages for Linux but it's beyond the $400 for the MS SBS. Just remember the MS system gives you 15 more connections. How soon will your company need more than that? 2 years 5 years? In my opinion the MS SBS is a fit for both you and your company. Given that you already have a backup software package your comfortable with and you know MS software from a file server standpoint. Go with it.

With the MS-SBS and the additional hardware your looking probably at somewhere between $1000 and $1300* in total costs plus your time to set it up. Based on a small server from say Dell with raid card and extra drives. An off the shelf 16 port gigabyte switch and gigabyte network cards for 10-12 computers.

I may be a Linux geek but there are times when Linux would be out of place. I think this is one of those times.

*my best guess. I did no research on that.

edit. I'll send you my bill for the consultation. LOL