Virtual Servers
Virtual servers can be used to create the illusion of having multiple servers on the network, when in reality there is only one. The technique is simple to implement: a system simply registers more than one NetBIOS name in association with its IP address. There are tangible benefits to doing this.
For example, the accounting department might have an
accounting
server, and clients of it would see
just the accounting disks and printers. The marketing department
could have its own server, marketing
, with its own
reports, and so on. However, all the services would be provided by
one medium-size Unix server (and one relaxed administrator) instead
of having one small server per department.
Virtual Server Configuration Options
Samba will allow a server to use more
than one NetBIOS name with the netbios
aliases
option. See Table 6-7.
Table 6-7. Virtual server configuration options
Option |
Parameters |
Function |
Default |
Scope |
---|---|---|---|---|
|
string (list of NetBIOS names) |
Additional NetBIOS names to respond to, for use with multiple “virtual” Samba servers |
None |
Global |
netbios aliases
The netbios
aliases
option can be used to give the Samba
server more than one NetBIOS name. Each NetBIOS name listed as a
value will be displayed in the Network Neighborhood of Windows
clients. When a connection is requested to any of the servers, it
will connect to the same Samba server.
This might come in handy, for example, if you’re transferring three departments’ data to a single Unix ...
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