> We have an opportunity to put forward a Samba on Linux/390 > solution for our > corporate file/print needs. The current environment is Novell > Netware on 4 > X Intel servers, approx 750 desktops, approx 3 million files > using about > 1TB disk. Our management is open to a Linux on mainframe > solution but I > don't want to put up a technical solution if it is not robust > and scalable.
Robust is no problem -- Samba is very, very stable and function-rich. Scalable will take some thought, and require some more information, mostly related to how you plan to deploy it. > We are running OS/390 on a 9672-R36 (G5), OSA-2 fast ethernet. One thing: do NOT use the Samba on OS/390. It is *very* old and has known vulnerabilities, as well as not performing all that well. Some questions: 1) Do you have VM? If not, I'd recommend acquiring z/VM before you seriously contemplate Linux-based services. Linux in a LPAR works, but managing it for HA services is a serious pain, and you'll want at least a warm failover server in case you need to do maintenance. Two LPARs is a bit expensive for just fileserver traffic. 2) What is the ratio of reads to writes? Volume of transactions is important; if your existing 4 servers are relatively busy, you probably will need another OSA card or a faster card to avoid degrading performance for the OS/390 system. You may want to investigate alternatives to the OSA with better price/performance curves. 3) Are the current servers colocated, or distributed? SMB and SMB over IP are fairly bandwidth intensive, and IPX over IP is *very* chatty. This will have an significant impact on your WAN if the servers are not colocated today. 4) Do you already have a mainframe hosted backup solution such as FDR or TSM? If not, can you afford to dedicate a tape drive to the LPAR? 5) Are there long-distance WAN links involved in this setup? If so, you may want to consider a more sophisticated architecture such as Samba overlaying a larger scale enterprise file system like AFS. This will substantially increase the scalability of the solution, at the price of some additional complexity (and also offer some nice benefits in terms of bandwidth optimization and backup solutions). If you're interesting in details of this solution, drop me a note off-list. > Is Samba going to work well in a real-life production environment? Any > thoughts or comments would be much appreciated. Yes, without question, Samba is stable and reliable. The environment around it needs planning carefully, but it's an excellent solution for file and print service. -- db
