SAMBA + NFS - is it good ?

[Maaz]

machineA and machineB are linux servers.

machineA is a file server(samba)
machineB will take backups of machineA's data directories(samba shares) via tar.

to take backup, on backup server(machineB) we mount the smb shares(mount -t cifs //machineA/share /localdirectory -o username=userid) then take backup of /localdirectory via tar.

since both servers are linux machines, so is it good(in terms of performance/speed) that I configure the SAMBA Server(machineA) as a NFS Server too, then mount nfs exported directories on machineB(backup server), and then take backups of nfs exported shares on machineB.

I have noticed that nfs is good(performance/speed wise), but the reason I am asking this is that since the file server(machineA) is a SAMBA server, so is it still good to configure NFS Server also, or configuring/running NFS will simply an overhead (as this file server(machineA) is SAMBA server)

Regards
Maaz

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

NFS to NFS is faster, and with the new file locking mechanism of NFS version 4, many of the concerns of previous versions are no longer relevant.

Security for NFS can be defined by hostname or IP address. Since all windows systems include a Samba client, NFS shares can keep certain files away from the prying eyes of users.

I would go with whatever meets the needs. HP-UX's Samba Client called a CIFS client actually uses the NFS client anyway, so the two are on that OS intermixed.

SEP