In my experience with Samba, the more ram the better.  Samba spans a child
process for each connection.  I set up a Samba server for about 60 users on
a RedHat 7.0 box with two 266 P2 processors and 128megs of ram and had
nothing but trouble.  I then used a Dell 1300 series server running RedHat
7.0 and with a 550 P3 processor and 512 megs of ram, and it has ran
flawlessly (under heavy usage) for a couple of months now.  Not to mention
it is noticeably faster than an NT server on the same hardware.  I have
noticed that CPU utilization on the server is seldomly very high, but you
should have a minimum of 128 megs of ram and allot an additional 3 to 4 megs
of ram for every user to achieve good performance.  Realistically I would
say one server for every 200 users or so (under heavy usage).

Forrest Dickinson
Network Administrator
Morgan Hunter Companies
(913) 491-3434


I am curious to find out how large (in numbers of users) samba can
realistically support on 1 box.

This box could be a monster machine, 4+Gb RAM, RAID array, etc..

Anyone have some numbers to throw out?

200, 400, 1000 users?

I am not finding much of whitepapers on the 'net.
--
Bob Tanner <tanner at real-time.com>       | Phone : (952)943-8700
http://www.mn-linux.org                 | Fax   : (952)943-8500
Key fingerprint =  6C E9 51 4F D5 3E 4C 66 62 A9 10 E5 35 85 39 D9