NFS vs. SMB

[Mark Tunnell]

To share a logical volume from one HP-UX 11.11 machine to another which would be preferable: NFS or a Samba mount? The drive will be a staging area for loading database files.

Thanks,

Mark

[Pete Randall]

Mark,

Here's a non-answer for you. ;^)

I suspect you're going to get Samba votes from its practitioners and NFS votes from NFS devotees. They both have their pros and cons. I would say go with which ever you're most comfortable with, I think they will both suit your needs.


Pete

[Geoff Wild]

Between HPUX servers - nfs - and use autofs on the client...or better yet - Enhanced Autofs:

http://h20293.www2.hp.com/portal/swdepot/displayProductInfo.do?productNumber=ENHAUTO

Rgds...Geoff

[Steven E. Protter]

HP has a great samba implementation. But the client runs on top of NFS.

So if you are using Samba, you are using NFS.

Samba is supposedly more modern and more secure and the data transmission is secure.

NFS is now pretty reliable but the data moves in clear text.

I've had horrendous problems with Samba on Linux where user permissions are not respected and mysql won't run on a Samba mount but will run on an NFS mount.

Neither tool is perfect.

If you have to let windows users share go Samba becasue their client works right and its built into the OS. Windows NFS client isnot built into the OS and it needs to be purchased.

For your use a Samba implementation would seem more logical.

SEP

[eric roseme]

I work on CIFS/Samba in the HP-UX lab (just to acknowledge possible bias). For HP-UX server-to-server, NFS. There are corner-cases for SMB, but for the majority it's NFS.

Eric Roseme

[rmueller58]

As Pete said, Tomato or Tomatoe?

I "prefer" NFS.

[Robert Fritz]

Actually, I talked toa couple of the CIFS whiz-kids here, and offer the following clarification:

SMB and CIFS are synonyms. They refer to the protocol for filesystem operations across a network that was was developed by IBM and is the defacto networking protocol on Wondows systems. Facts notwithstanding, I've seen posts out there explaining the difference between SMB and CIFS. Sometimes people post their hunches as fact.

Samba is an open source CIFS server; it emulates a Windows server. HP releases a modified version for HPUX as the HP CIFS Server. Neither version uses NFS.

The HP CIFS Client is based on a third-party product called Sharity. It emulates a Windows client, and indeed this software does use NFS, but only internally as a frontend--it is the CIFS protocol that the CIFS client transmits onto the network.

Also, I'd like to note that NFSv3 doesn't provide integrity protection (IE: protecting against malicious interception and modifications) whereas CIFS can support those protections.

That said, I do find CIFS a little less performant.

[Alzhy]

Definitely NFS and use UDP:

server1# mount -F nfs -o proto=udp server2:/stage /stage

Using NFS and UDP will be significantly faster that SMB/CIFS and even TCP based NFS.

[Ronald Schwartz_1]

Just one more option to go with Nelson's example is to put '-o soft' so that if the server supplying the NFS were to go down your client wonâ t get locked up.
Ron