Samba vs. Fast Connect

[bard9]

My company is currently using AIX connections (eveolved from Totalnet) in order to connect Wintel machines to AIX shares. We have had poor luck with it and it doesn't seem to support multi-user connections through terminal services.

We are looking at new products and I am wondering what the benefits or differences between FastConnect from IBm and Samba (other than the obvious price issue). I am mostly interested in tools, capabilities, reliablity, and support.

Any insight any of you may have had with either of these products would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Bard

 

[theycallmetim]

FastConnect would allow you to use Active Directory or LDAP support, and interoperability w/ AIX security such as password matching.

Samba, while free must use different password files if using AIX as the security server. Meaning, if you change your AIX password, you will then need to manually change your Samba password to keep them the same (they don't have to be though)

You could use samba w/ Active Directory as well, just not LDAP.

As far as support.....You don't really need support w/ Samba, it's easy to use, and even IBM has good redbooks about how to configure and size it. FastConnect... pay and deal w/ IBM.

If money is not an issue, and you like using LDAP for authenticaion; pay and use FastConnect.

For all others; use Samba.