Samba 4 appliances by SerNet and Univention

Serves You Right

Article from ADMIN 14/2013

By Thomas Drilling

Shortly after the Samba team finalized Samba 4 in December 2012, SerNet and Univention integrated the new Samba into their appliances that give administrators an easy way to set up and test a Samba 4-based Active Directory domain controller.

Samba 4 is an important milestone for the entire IT world with its new Active Directory (AD) functionality. Originally, Samba primarily provided file and print services using the SMB/CIFS protocol on a Linux server; however, the most significant new feature in Samba 4 relates to authentication services.

A Linux server with Samba 4 can provide an Active Directory service for a Windows domain without Microsoft components. Version 3.1 of the Univention Corporate Server (UCS) [1], which was released in December, uses the Samba 4 version 4.0rc6, which was further developed by the Univention developers collaborating directly with the Samba team in version 4.0rc1.

The Samba 3 version is included in UCS for file and print services, or where the UCS is deployed as an NT domain controller, is v3.6.8. The Samba 4 implementation in the current v0.6 of the Samba SerNet appliance [2] is equivalent to the stable version of Samba 4.0 [3].

Samba 4 Structure

A Samba domain comprises at least one Samba 4-based domain controller whose trust context Windows clients can join as members. In the Univention version, UCS member servers also can do this because Univention integrates Samba 4 and Samba 3 components in its Corporate Server. A UCS member server does not offer any login services itself; however, with file or print services based on Samba 3, for example, UCS credentials are needed to log in to a UCS member server.

UCS 3.1

Univention, out of Bremen, Germany, was one of the early adopters [4] of Samba 4, which it integrated more than a year ago into its Debian 6-based UCS. After extensive tests, Univention assures that

...

Use Express-Checkout link below to read the full article (PDF).