DevConf.cz 2016

Samba is the well established server software implementing SMB and related Windows-protocols on Linux since almost a quarter decade now. Despite the fact that it has to follow Windows as the reference implementation of all these protocols, Samba was able to substantially raise the bar: Long before Microsoft announced SMB file server cluster with SMB 3.0 in late 2012, Samba created an all-active scale-out file server cluster when running on top of a distributed / clustered file system with the introduction of the CTDB software.

While CTDB is at its core a special purpose clustered database and messaging transport for Samba, it is also a slim little resource manager for virtual IPs and a few other services in the cluster.

This presentation describes the architecture of Samba and the history of the creation of CTDB. It demonstrates how easy one can set up a scale out Samba cluster on top of a distributed scale-out file system with the example of GlusterFS, and illustrates a few of the pleasantries that the SMB protocol brings with it in the clustered environment, such as fail over without aborting I/O by virtue of durable/persistent file handles.

Finally the current project to move towards a unified HA infrastructure for storage components is introduced.

(The talk will be co-presented with Günther Deschner (FAS: gd).)