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On 06/04/14 17:14, Simon Waters wrote: > On 06/04/14 16:35, Philip Hudson wrote: >> >> Originally, but now it's the de-facto standard for file-serving on and >> between linux boxen too. Hence the renaming to Common Internet File >> System. > > Please no. > > CIFS/SMB is a terrible protocol. The only reason to use it, is that > Microsoft boxes speak it. The renaming was Microsoft branding in the > 1990's to make it look like they weren't behind the curve on the > Internet stuff (when they obviously were). > > For all its faults everyone I know who networks Linux/Unix boxes > seriously at the file system level uses NFS as the de-facto standard, or > more modern distributed or clustered file systems for high availability, > or clustering systems. > > That said very few people do much basic file sharing box to box like > this, quite often the file systems are presented across networks using > protocols that present them as block devices across the network (think > iSCSI like, but I don't think many actually use iSCSI itself). > > Some use NFS rather than block level presentation for thin client > devices, but again the file system is often not really shared. NFS is > just a convenient protocol for providing an end users home directory > (and possibly also a root disk) to the client machine over the network. > > So you have a CUPS servers for printing, IMAP servers for mail, document > management systems for documents. At work there are a couple of backend > bits that use NFS between the document management, and back-end servers, > and a few bits that we use behind the scenes, but nothing that would be > exposed to client machines that is simply a file system. > > Not sure if this is a good or a bad thing, it is just what I see. > Mostly correct of course - at the heavy backend, it's all cluster/global file systems and FCoE/iSCSI attaching to network block storage for your inter-server heavy lifting (and has been for a long time now). Of course *nix-centric shops will almost exclusively use NFS for filesystem level intercommunication where it's required and even Samba4 lags several SMB versions behind currently (whereas most Linux systems already support the latest NFS 4.1 and Windows similarly lags behind in NFS support). What Simon's missing is that most businesses in the world support almost exclusively Windows desktops for their staff, in the hundreds of millions. All of these talk CIFS and nothing else all day, every day: I have no figures (nobody does) but I'd be willing to bet a lot more traffic is shifted globally via CIFS than NFS, purely due to all these company intranets. (This means nothing of course, I just thought it was interesting to mention.) Now, I'll be the first to say there are a lot of things wrong with Windows networks but CIFS isn't particularly one of them unless you're still on XP/2003 or older. SMB *used* to be awful, granted. But so was NFS to start with. Apple Talk has always sucked. Both are now pretty good and it would be even nicer if all major distros and appliance providers would work together properly to provide concurrent access to the latest and greatest versions of both to all systems - that would save a lot of headaches. The CIFS rebranding was indeed a bit silly, everyone - including MS devs - still calls it SMB and to this day its revisions are called "SMB versions", currently at SMB 3.02. >From experience I can say that SMB 3/3.02 (only available since Win8/2012+) is a bit of a game changer if you have a lot of Windows only traffic, which many of my clients do. The improvements are really tangible especially if you're doing heavy VM work, which SMB 3 is optimised for. Automatic multihoming DCs on fast backbones can chew through thousands of AD/CIFS clients, live VM migration is blistering quick now (even Linux guests which are now fully functional on Hyper-V), SMB-over-RDMA, etc, etc. If you only use Linux none of this matters to you but if you've got a lot of Windows boxes to herd, SMB3 is awesome. If you don't mind running *really* bleeding edges of the Samba4 server on your Linux boxes in a mixed environment, nearly all of the SMB3 features are there for use as well, great for combined Windows DC/Linux Samba4 DC failover setups - or just saving a few quid of MS licensing. As Simon said, I'm not sure if this is a good or bad thing either, just reporting from my own experience. I use NFS and SMB and both have a lot to like. Current SMB3+ is however definitely NOT terrible, not anymore at least! Regards -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq