Enterprise open source Toolkit

Samba 3.2 adds cluster support

Matthew Broersma ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 02 Jul 2008 17:14 BST

The Samba project on Tuesday released a major update to the file and print components of the server software, adding clustered file system support, compatibility improvements and other changes.

Samba is an open-source re-implementation of the SMB/CIFS networking protocol used in Windows, and is used by most Linux and Unix distributions, including Apple's Mac OS X, to work with Windows networks.

Samba 3.2 adds the ability to work with distributed file systems, such as Sun's Lustre, IBM's GPFS and Red Hat's GFS, to provide clustered file server systems, the Samba development team said.

The Samba-based clustered file server systems offer full Windows file-sharing semantics, developers said. They said Samba is already being shipped in production file server products for animation and video-production customers.

Clustered computing allows systems to be highly redundant, and thus more highly available, or to provide parallel calculating power in applications such as high-performance-computing (HPC) clusters.

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The new Samba software extends the SMB/CIFS protocol to allow data to be encrypted, developers said.

Administrators can mark a file system share as 'encrypted' and all access to these shares will be encrypted over the network using the Generic Security Services Application Program Interface (GSSAPI) techniques, developers said.

Other changes include a reduced memory footprint, full internet protocol version 6 (IPv6) support, a more modular architecture, and compatibility with the latest Windows systems, including Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, developers said.

The Samba project is one of the most prominent organisations pushing for Microsoft to provide better interoperability information for its Windows clients, in accordance with an antitrust ruling by the European Commission.