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Re: silug: IP address? -- don't confuse DC functionality with SMB



On Thu, 2004-12-30 at 21:32, Casey Boone wrote:
> im agreeing with nate here, over the summer i worked with a LARGE
> (250+ locations, average 1000+ nodes per location, one giant AD tree)
> network containing everything from nt4 on up and all worked just
> peachy all the way around the board.  honestly i was very much
> impressed with just how well everything DID work.

Again, you'all are talking about DC functionality.  ADS is ADS, and
Windows Server 2003 _does_ improve ADS.  It not only improves their
proprietary LDAP/Kerberos solution as well as legacy CIFS (NT4)
services, but it adds more inter-directory services too.  That's why
ACLs and other things work, because they work on tokens that come from
the proprietary Kerberos implementation (or the equivalent, legacy form
for CIFS).

I'm talking about the actual sharing and data transfer of the
_network_filesystem_ in the SMB protocol itself.  "Default" SMB will
work.  NT5.1 (2003) servers will exchange data with pre-NT5.1 clients. 
But they are reduced performance, as ZDLabs and other studies have shown
-- especially compared to Samba 3 which _dynamically_ supports older
clients better.

And if you start enabling SMB features, they will break pre-NT5.1
clients.  There were a lot of "chopping block" type decisions made in
Windows Server 2003.  Microsoft wanted a "clean slate" in the SMB
protocol, because each Windows version -- especially NT5.0/2000, NT/4.0
and DOS7/95/98/ME -- had various "quirks" that were not always
compatible, and a PITA to deal with.

So in Microsoft's case, they decided to just _drop_ support for those
quirks with NT5.1/2003.  Samba 3 does a fine job of handling them. 
There are varying commentary on more of the bleeding edge work of Samba
3.x that notes various things "dropped" in the SMB protocol support
Windows Server 2003.  And in the ZDLabs review, Microsoft explicitly
stated that Windows Server 2003 performance and feature support is only
guaranteed with Windows XP clients.

If you are still using Windows 2000 Server at the _file_ front, you
won't see this.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith                                    b.j.smith@ieee.org 
-------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Subtotal Cost of Ownership (SCO) for Windows being less than Linux
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) assumes experts for the former, costly
retraining for the latter, omitted "software assurance" costs in 
compatible desktop OS/apps for the former, no free/legacy reuse for
latter, and no basic security, patch or downtime comparison at all.




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