Samba runs rings around Win2000

With 10 weeks to go before firms must sign up to Microsoft's Software Assurance licensing scheme or pay full price for upgrades, new tests suggest open-source Samba software may offer a viable alternative to upgrading file servers to Windows 2000.

Results published this week in IT Week's sister publication PC Magazine show that the latest Samba software now surpasses the performance of Windows 2000 by about 100 percent under benchmark tests.

In terms of scalability, the results show that Linux and Samba can handle four times as many client systems as Windows 2000 before performance begins to drop off. Consequently firms can save money on hardware and software upgrades, and can avoid the administrative and financial costs of licensing Windows file servers, by using the Samba alternative.

Samba is an open-source implementation of the Common Internet File System (CIFS) protocol used for file and printer sharing by PCs running Windows. In effect, Samba enables a Linux or Unix server to function as a file server for client PCs running Windows software.

Jay White, IT manager at electronics firm BF Group, said that Samba is one of the most useful pieces of server software available for a mixed Windows and Linux environment. "Our Samba server has been online for 394 days so far. The total cost is the hardware plus 30 minutes of my time each year," he said.

Mark Twells, IT coordinator at a large education facility, said, "We run six Samba servers on a variety of hardware [and] we have around 1,000 users. Configuration is done using text files. Far from getting in the way, these actually simplify things, because I can copy chunks of settings from one system to another. I can't do that with Windows drag and drop."

Microsoft declined to comment on the results of the comparative benchmarking.

In addition to providing file and print capabilities, Samba can also act as a Windows NT 4.0 Primary Domain Controller (PDC) Server. This allows users to log in to the Samba server, which provides another cost saving compared with running a licensed Windows NT 4.0 PDC. Microsoft Active Directory is not supported by the current Samba 2.2.3, but will be in version 3, which is now under development.

Meanwhile preliminary test results show that the first production version of the open-source Apache 2.0 Web server software performs as well as Microsoft's IIS Web server software. And Suse will this week launch version 8 of its popular Linux distribution.

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See also:

Samba 3 extends lead over Win 2003

The latest Samba release shows Windows a clean pair of heels in file and print peformance  14 Oct 2003

Samba beats Windows

Samba 3 runs rings around Windows Server 2003 in file serving performance  12 Oct 2003

Linux update aligns Samba to cut costs

Red Hat's latest Linux beta release includes facilities for configuring Samba file and print servers  28 Jan 2003

Macro test floors StarOffice

Tests of StarOffice 6.0 and OpenOffice.org have revealed serious flaws in the macro subsystem  24 Jun 2002

Apache quells scaling doubts

Apache plus Red Hat gives Windows 2000 and IIS a run for their money on four-way Intel servers  21 Jun 2002

Vendors build United Linux

But can a unified Linux succeed without Red Hat?  30 May 2002

Firms reject Microsoft licence plan

With eight weeks to go, many firms are still reluctant to commit to Microsoft's upcoming licensing scheme  17 May 2002

Samba avoids patent costs

Creators of the open source Samba software say that it is unaffected by Microsoft patents covering related technology  02 May 2002

IIS outlook remains patchy

Microsoft was last week patching its IIS Web server just as Apache 2.0 shipped - will IIS users reassess their choice?  15 Apr 2002

Apache developers sign off version 2.0.35

Web server software finally ready for use  08 Apr 2002

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