Choosing a Server Distro for a domain controller in a SMB environment
Hi LQ,
This is my first post here so please excuse my noobness. I used to work with UNIX (Sun OS on E10000's) back in the late 90's and early 2000's but my Linux experience is limited and ... may we say...dated. I think the last distro I used was Debian etch. I have a question regarding choosing distro's for servers in a smb environment with older hardware. I have a customer who wants to replace Exchange servers with the Zentyal version 3.5 product (Ubuntu Server 14.04 based) that is due to be coming out next month. For security and to eliminate a single point of failure I have proposed building a separate server on their internal network to serve as Primary Domain Controller running as the active directory services replacement using Samba4, Kerberos, and Bind9-dlz. I've think I got it narrowed down to 3 distro's for the PDC but I would really like to hear your opinions.
I am still very rusty, times have changed and I've got a lot to learn and relearn so please bear with me. I'll get better, I [promise :study: ! Thanks, Tim Edit: I do understand that Samba4 is not yet AFAIK in stable for Debian or available? for CentOS and that is OK. In fact I might lean to wait for Debian certification which may not happen until somewhere at or after Samba 4.2. Just looking for a production OS recommendation. (And maybe a welcome !) Thanks LQ Troops ! |
Hello and welcome.
I stopped thinking at older hardware and latest OS. How old is this hardware? |
Hi jefro. Thank you for your kind reply.
Quote:
The "Server" Hardware for the PDC is a 3 Ghz Pentium 4 with 2 GB of Ram. The Primary hard drive is ~160 GB. Tim |
Adding resolution.
We are going to use Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS (No GUI) for this PDC. Reasons are:
Thanks to all, Tim |
Quote:
Ubuntu is excellent for server and desktop network environment, but for less admin work i would have chosen the Debian route. less updates and it just runs and even can run years if kernel updates aren't needed. |
Thanks tlan,
+1 rep. That is an excellent point regarding the frequent updates with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Server Edition. I do plan to test Debian as an alternative. However, I will have to then compile the required Samba4 for that distro. Going that path has its own additional admin responsibilities ;-) I guess I have to choose my poison :-D Thanks again and all the best, Tim |
yes please keep in mind that Ubuntu is a fork of Debian and even LTS still uses a fairly large amount of applications, libraries, etc... from the raw debian repositories.
Of the three you have listed I'd go either pure Debian or CentOS v7. If you are not familiar with the RH way of doing administration, then sticking with pure Debian is the better option. |
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