Version 3 of Samba is the best open source alternative for Microsoft Windows servers.
SerNet offers producer-independent distribution of Samba 3 as Enterprise Samba. This offer has the advantage that these Samba packages are derived from one source for all Linux and Unix versions and hardware platforms while the Samba packages in the RHEL and SLES distributions are distinctly different and risks are possible in mixed operations.
What is Samba 3?
Samba 3 offers a powerful and highly scalable CIFS server that can be integrated into almost all authentication environments:
OpenLDAP, Active Directory, Sun ONE, E-Directory, Red Hat Directory Server, DirX and many more.
Samba 3 offers its own user administration in a "NT4 domain".
Other technologies for interoperability have been developed from Samba 3. Using NTLM authentication, for example, access to a Linux proxy (Squid) can be combined with Windows authentication. This also applies to access to an Apache Web server.
With winbind the Samba team delivered a software product that separates authentication in Windows networks from operation of a CIFS server.
SerNet's Enterprise Samba and Samba 3 is integrated into many products and services from many producers:
Fujitsu, IBM, Isilon, Likewise, Novell, Powerfile, Riverbed and many more.
