VMware/SAMBA

[i386]

I planning on adding a second domain controller at work soon. The one I have now isn't working too hard but I'd sleep better with a little more redundancy in that department. My DC is also the print server for all of our network printers which is about 12 of them. If my 1st DC goes down the 2nd one will not automagically pick up the slack as a print server because I do not plan to cluster ($$$). I had an idea today that I could set up a SAMBA printer in a VM running on Linux. Keeping a backup of the disk image would be trivial and redeploying to a different box in the event of a disaster should be simple. Any of you IT guys using virtualization? It's been a while since I've messed with SAMBA. How well does it live in Active Directory these days.

A little about my setup...

I connect my workstations to the printers via simple vbscripts in group policy. I have each department broken out into their own Organizational Units with user and computer OU's below those. At logoff, all printers are disconnected. At logon printers are connected. This allows me to move workstations from one department to another or to deploy a spare workstation without any manual configuration. I just drag the computer into its respective OU, gpupdate and give it a couple reboots to catch the GPOs on the computer side. With group policy, redirected My Documents and roaming profiles, swapping out a workstation is almost as simple as swapping a phone. I'd like to keep it that way.

The "magic" of connecting printers in Windows 2000 and newer is that the machine sharing the printer will also hand out the driver when the workstation connects to the printer share. Can SAMBA be made to do this too?

 

[rogerwa]

Re: VMware/SAMBA

Why switch to Samba? why not just deploy the VMWare with two Vms on each box. One box could carry the load of the PDC and the other the print server. In the case you have hardware failure on either box you just activate the dormant Vm on the non-affected box. Using the VMWare hypervisor you will limit your downtime to both capabiities to h/w failures, since OS crashes will not effect the other VM.

Right now I am working with our hosting provider to provide a Grid Computing capability to our finance department. If we did not look at virtualization we would be looking at over 100 nodes (dual dual core processor engine). These nodes often times would only be used once a month for a 24 hour massive calculation. Using the VMware and "pizzabox" servers will allow us to cut deeply into the 100 node requirement.

Much of our infrastructure utilizes the virtualization of the IBM p-series and AIX logical partitioning in a utility computing environment.

If your running a big shop, you gotta do virtualization.

 

[i386]

Re: VMware/SAMBA

I'm intrigued. Let me digest this for a bit. Thanks.

 

[JasonB]

Re: VMware/SAMBA

Samba can do what you ask, but it is a pain if you aren't used to it. I know it can emulate a DC, but I've never wanted to try it as If I remember, it only does old NT4 style PDC/BDC type roles. As a member server, it acts much like any other box, just have to mind the p's and q's when adding users and groups to smb.conf. One really cool use though is using something like GhostScript to create a network "PDF" printer using an HP color laserjet driver. Print to it and it spits a PDF file out to a share. IF I worked with Samba more, I would probably like it more, but in my world, Windows is just the way to go.

Redundant DC's are good, just make sure to keep a copy of the list of FSMO's you need to xfer if one goes down hard. I would also likely make it a global catalog if bandwith is ok.

I'm with Roger. VM is the way to go. I'm working on my VCP (VM Certified Pro). Currently have 3 ESX boxes and a slew of VMware Servers running on CentOS 4.5. I generally don't use VS\Linux in production, but have before. I use it mostly for Dev/QA stuff. You can't beat the price . There are some writings out there about DC's under VMWare Server. I ran an Exchange server in VMS for a while with a load of 50 users/6gb storage. Ran great until I had to promote it to a DC/GC. It suddenly became a dog until I tweaked it a bit. Never ran like I wanted, but did ok as it was a temporary solution that was in place for 30 days. I could have gotten much better performance with a few more tweaks, but never got the time to do it. This was on a dual 2.8 Xeon w/ hyperthreading, 8GB ram (2 for the vm due to Exchange), on a 3 drive SATA Raid 5. Same box non-virtualized on the same hardware absolutely screamed.

If you go the linux/vm route, I have a great script I got from the vm boards that can run as a cron job to suspend your running VM's and tar a copy of them to another folder/mount/drive/??? for backups. PM me if you need it. Whatever you do, I would advise a full-vm type backup. I've had a few annoyances with VmS and vmx file oddities, but the VMX is so easy to rebuild, its not a problem if the VMDK's are intact.

I hate to expound the Microsoft kool-aid, but they have made Virtual Server a bit more palatible with their licensing of Windows in MS VM's, but that licensing appears to expire when LongHorn shows up next year. The big problem with MS VS is Windows. The host, if 2003 std can only have 4gb and the host is still a resource hog compared to running VMS on a minimal install of Cent, or Ubuntu, or ...

You can also try out Xen. It's "boxed" with Cent5 and others. Haven't had time to play with it yet, but it shows promise. Companies like Virtual Iron are trying to make it production grade.

Virtualization is the way to go. The heat savings in a crowded server room is worth the price of admission.

 

[ddennis]

Re: VMware/SAMBA

VMware is DEF. the way to go. MUCH better performance over MS virtual server. I have 9 ESX 3.0.2 servers up and running now and am slowly using the P2V tool to move more physical servers into ESX. I am using an HP C7000 blade enclosure with 680 and 480 quad core blades as my ESX hosts. Performance is stellar with this setup! I have moved servers into the vm environment overnight and when the developers come in they cant tell the difference, other than better performance! Not to mention the faster reboot times that I see with the guest OS's GREATLY cuts down our maint. window!

If you go the VMware route...You can use the free version and it will do fine...you just have the extra overhead of the base os. OR you can purchase the entry level ESX which will give much better performance. If you do that I suggest using the VMware consolodated backup to backup the VM's.

 

[i386]

Re: VMware/SAMBA

I really appreciate the responses. I've been playing with VMWare since the 90's I think. I am only now beginning to realize how important virtualization has become. I'm going to step back for now and do some reading and researching the VMWare product line. I think it would do me a lot of good to get a better overall picture of what I can do with virtualization in my shop before I put anything into production. I'm about to retire 2 servers and they make great testing boxes for me to play with. I only have 9 servers at the moment and I'm working to reduce that. I don't have a real "data center" like some of you may so I won't be looking for something that scales like some. I do think I will find that I can use something a little more robust than what I initially suggested.

I'd welcome any recommendations for books that can show the "big picture". Specifically, I'd like to see ideas on various levels of implementation that may range from a vm running on a single box to something that scales to the point where a more centralized approach to management becomes important. Techniques for handling backup/restore and disaster are particularly important.

Thanks again!