Section 12.1. Introduction


12.1. Introduction

Abmas has continued its miraculous growth; indeed, nothing seems to be able to stop its diversification into multiple (and seemingly unrelated) fields. Its latest acquisition is Abmas Snack Foods, a big player in the snack-food business.

With this acquisition comes new challenges for you and your team. Abmas Snack Foods is a well-developed business with a huge and heterogeneous network. It already has Windows, NetWare, and Proprietary UNIX, but as yet no Samba or Linux. The network is mature and well-established, and there is no question of its chosen user authentication scheme being changed for now. You need to take a wise new approach.

You have decided to set the ball rolling by introducing Samba-3 into the network gradually, taking over key services and easing the way to a full migration and, therefore, integration into Abmas's existing business later.

12.1.1. Assignment Tasks

You've promised the skeptical Abmas Snack Foods management team that you can show them how Samba can ease itself and other Open Source technologies into their existing infrastructure and deliver sound business advantages. Cost cutting is high on their agenda (a major promise of the acquisition). You have chosen Web proxying and caching as your proving ground.

Abmas Snack Foods has several thousand users housed at its head office and multiple regional offices, plants, and warehouses. A high proportion of the business's work is done online, so Internet access for most of these users is essential. All Internet access, including for all regional offices, is funneled through the head office and is the job of the (now your) networking team. The bandwidth requirements were horrific (comparable to a small ISP), and the team soon discovered proxying and caching. In fact, they became one of the earliest commercial users of Microsoft ISA.

The team is not happy with ISA. Because it never lived up to its marketing promises, it underperformed and had reliability problems. You have pounced on the opportunity to show what Open Source can do. The one thing they do like, however, is ISA's integration with Active Directory. They like that their users, once logged on, are automatically authenticated against the proxy. If your alternative to ISA can operate completely seamlessly in their Active Directory domain, it will be approved.

This is a hands-on exercise. You build software applications so that you obtain the functionality Abmas needs.



    Samba-3 by Example. Practical Exercises to Successful Deployment
    Samba-3 by Example: Practical Exercises to Successful Deployment (2nd Edition)
    ISBN: 013188221X
    EAN: 2147483647
    Year: 2005
    Pages: 142

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