Chapter 4. The 500-User Office

The Samba-3 networking you explored in Chapter 3, "Secure Office Networking" covers the finer points of configuration of peripheral services such as DHCP and DNS, and WINS. You experienced implementation of a simple configuration of the services that are important adjuncts to successful deployment of Samba.

An analysis of the history of postings to the Samba mailing list easily demonstrates that the two most prevalent Samba problem areas are

• Defective resolution of a NetBIOS name to its IP address

• Printing problems

The exercises so far in this book have focused on implementation of the simplest printing processes involving no print job processing intelligence. In this chapter, you maintain that same approach to printing, but Chapter 5, "Making Happy Users" presents an opportunity to make printing more complex for the administrator while making it easier for the user.

Chapter 3, "Secure Office Networking" demonstrates operation of a DHCP server and a DNS server as well as a central WINS server. You validated the operation of these services and saw an effective implementation of a Samba domain controller using the TDbsam passdb backend.

The objective of this chapter is to introduce more complex techniques that can be used to improve manageability of Samba as networking needs grow. In this chapter, you implement a distributed DHCP server environment, a distributed DNS server arrangement, a centralized WINS server, and a centralized Samba domain controller.

A note of caution is important regarding the Samba configuration that is used in this chapter. The use of a single domain controller on a routed, multisegment network is a poor design choice that leads to potential network user complaints. This chapter demonstrates some successful techniques in deployment and configuration management. This should be viewed as a foundation chapter for complex Samba deployments.

As you master the techniques presented here, you may find much better methods to improve network management and control while reducing human resource overheads. You should take the opportunity to innovate and expand on the methods presented here and explore them to the fullest.