Running TAM on Samba

[Bloody Jack Kidd]

For small offices, test environment and those will to operate "outside the box" - running TAM without a Windows server is more than possible, it's entirely viable.  I have setup test environments for clients for both TAM 9.x and 10.x using SAMBA on BSD and it runs like a champ.

SAMBA emulates basic Windows server services very well, in essence, SAMBA can make any unix-like OS (BSD, Linux, OS X) act like a Windows server.  Due to the design of TAM, all it need to operate is a solid file server and that is what SAMBA gives you.  You still need Windows clients/workstations or a Terminal Server for the front-end, but you can save thousands on the back-end.

In simple environments, this integrates very easily, but of course more complex Active Directory integrated domains will complicate the setup somewhat.

Also this is far from an Applied supported solution - but it does work.

[Gene Foraker]

Just how small of an agency and how much savings?

I see Microsoft Server 2008 OEM for sale for well under $1000 with 5 licenses and pacs of 5 extra licenses for another $750.

http://www.nextag.com/microsoft-windows-server-2008-oem/products-html

[Bloody Jack Kidd]

Just how small of an agency and how much savings?

I see Microsoft Server 2008 OEM for sale for well under $1000 with 5 licenses and pacs of 5 extra licenses for another $750.

http://www.nextag.com/microsoft-windows-server-2008-oem/products-html

In that case the savings would be somewhere between $1000 and $1750. 

I would say up to about 25 users.  Depends on the agency and how their network is setup.  If they are just doing file and print and not really relying on all the Windows Server bells and whistles, you could scale this up to 100+ easy.

[Nick Oliver]

Haha, "that'll be between $1000 and $1750."  That'll learn`em.  Anyhoo, I'll still recommend going the winders route over a unix implementation as there are more (albeit many are simply ignorant) winders pros available to make sure it runs for you.  The average agency owner can build a winders (not that I'd propose they do so) and get it running, but they'd be scared to touch a linux disty because they fear the unknown and they know that they can get quick support from a winders geek down the street.

[Gene Foraker]

I'm going to have to agree with Nick, here.   (I kind of hinted at that in my message.)  While it might be a very viable network, support is the problem.   A small agency agency under 20 users is likely to have only one internal IT person, maybe part time.   He or she might understand the Samba setup, but what if he is out of the county on vacation or gets hit by a truck or heart attack?   You would have to have an external tech help out, but what are the odds the external IT guy or company would know what he is doing with this?   You would have to educate him with your money and your downtime.   Just not worth it.

A larger agency could run it and have internal knowledge redundancy, but with the increased profitability of a larger agency, the savings would not be significant.

Now come up with an open source alternative to MS Office and you get my attention.    An agency has much more tied up in Office licensing than in MS Server.   Unfortunately Open Office won't work with TAM and I don't think it ever will.

[Bloody Jack Kidd]

I have offices I consult for running Samba / CUPS for file & print on BSD servers.  I set them up this way precisely because I know these things will run day and night without a hiccup, since I already have a full-time job, I don't have tons of spare time to babysit sketchy networks.

So while finding capable support may be a bit more difficult - the need for support seems to be significantly less (in my experience). 

Applied's decision to make TAM dependent on MS Office is why you're stuck with that licensing nightmare -

Anyway, my point is that you certainly can use SAMBA with TAM and the combination has numerous and significant benefits.

[insurebatimore]

It's easy to find reliable support for a standard Linux installation, at least in the major metro areas.  If all you're doing is running Ubuntu + SAMBA and maybe an AD integration...  no problem.

The only problem I've ever had is when some update replaced my smb.conf w/ a default.  The easiest update-related problem I've ever had.

[Bloody Jack Kidd]

hate it when an update messes with my confs!

[Joshua Conner]

I did this 5 years ago and contemplated it.  had tam running just fine on freebsd5 with samba.  But in the end we ended up going back to windows.

I always wondered why tam wouldnt support it all it needs is simple file sharing.  To be honest freebsd did it more efficiently.

[Joshua Hirsh]

Probably the same reasons why they wouldn't support a 64 bit backend file server for a long time either..

In theory it should be fine. You might have to play around with disabling oplocks in Samba depending on how many clients are hitting it.


As for protecting your config files... that's what "chattr +i" is for..