Section 13.1. Introduction

13.1. Introduction

The sparrow is a small bird whose sounds are drowned out by the noise of the busy world it lives in. Likewise, the simple steps that can be taken to improve the reliability and availability of a Samba network are often drowned out by the volume of discussions about grandiose Samba clustering designs. This is not intended to suggest that clustering is not important, because clearly it is. This chapter does not devote itself to discussion of clustering because each clustering methodology uses its own custom tools and methods. Only passing comments are offered concerning these methods.

A search^[1] for "samba cluster" produced 71,600 hits. And a search for "highly available samba" and "highly available windows" produced an amazing number of references. It is clear from the resources on the Internet that Windows file and print services availability, reliability, and scalability are of vital interest to corporate network users.

^[1] <http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=samba+cluster&btnG=Google+ Search>

So without further background, you can review a checklist of simple steps that can be taken to ensure acceptable network performance while keeping costs of ownership well under control.