Samba, FTP or rsync

[Luis Toro]

We have several HPUX servers running Samba so that users can view reports on those servers on their Windows desktops. On one setup, the HPUX server is on a separate lan, and users are complaining about performance. My questions are:
- what is the impact on the network if a number of users access the same file (ie., does the file get transferred across the network each time it is accessed by each user?).
- would ftp or rsync reduce the network traffic if the files were replicated to a server on the users' LAN?
Thanks

[IT_2007]

I would consider rsync utility since it does delta changes in transfers only.

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom Luis,

ftp should not be used because the authentication is not using encryption.

rsync using tghe ssh option will be very fast if the files need to be copied to other systems.

If the users need the files to be centralized samba is fine.

SEP

[Luis Toro]

Thanks for the replies. Sounds like rsync would be the answer. But would you know how the underlying protocol for samba works in terms of what is transferred across the network whenever a file is accessed by several users? I haven't found an answer after scouring the internet (at least not one in layman's terms).

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

You can also consider sftp or ftp over ssh (almost the same)

For Samba, I have noticed that whatever setup you choose in interacting windows/linux/hp-ux, GETting is always faster than PUTting, so try to FETCH from the target host rather than SEND from the originating host.

Enjoy, Have FUN! H.Merijn

[Bill Hassell · Accepted solution]

Network filesystems (NFS or SAMBA) will strain a network very significantly. Yes, if 10 users all read the same file, there will be 10 copies of the file records transferred. There is no possible way to synchronize your users to read the file at diffrerent times. To them, the share looks like a simple filesystem.

The fastest transfer method is ftp. The fastest secure method is sftp. But even rsync, rcp or cp will be faster than SAMBA because only one transfer takes place. Then the local users see the file on their local disk. Now if you mean that you will transfer the file to another server on the same subnet, all sorts of questions come up such as: Is the HP-UX box on a WAN? If so, data security is extremely compromised with SAMBA. WANs are by their very nature, very poor at handling bidirectional packets as found in a file sharing protocol.

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

For WAN shares, I have played with sshfs (1).
I don't know if it is possible to port this to HP-UX, and if there are available interfaces for Winblows, but my experiments with sshfs worked pretty well. And that is just as safe as ssh itself.

(1) http://fuse.sourceforge.net/sshfs.html

Another note about speed on sftp/scp. If you stay on a small LAN, you can play with the ssh_config settings for compression and/or encryption.
Not encrypting is of course not safe, but if two boxes are behind a switch in a closed secure environment, not encrypting the transfers can speed up. Playing with the compression level might also influence the transfer rate, but that all depends on the balance you need between network traffic and CPU load. Both are settable on a per-host basis.

Enjoy, Have FUN! H.Merijn

[Luis Toro]

Thank for your input.