SAM_Lecture_Five
SAM_Lecture_Five
System
Administration &
Maintenance
Exploring software and platform
services
Dr. Ahmed Alnasheri 05/26/2025
File system is used to mange how data stored and retrieved to /from HD.
FAT32 is a popular FAT system that's compatible with Windows, Linux, and
Mac OS.
But it has severe limitations on the amount of data you can store on a
volume.
What happens if you have multiple users (as sysadmin) that want to share
files between each other?
System Administration and Maintenance ( Lecture Four ) 2
Network File Storage
Well, they need to store the files somewhere and they need to
be able to retrieve the files over a network.
What is NFS?
From there, you can access the shared directory like you
would any other folder in a computer.
System Administration and Maintenance ( Lecture Four ) 5
Network File Storage
NFS is a good solution to file sharing within the network, but as with
anything on a network heavy usage will slow down the file system.
While NFS works with all major operating systems there are still
interoperability issues with Windows.
If your fleet consists mostly Windows machines you might want to look at
using something like Samba.
Samba services are similar to NFS since it can centrally share and manage
files services. Also, all major operating systems can use a Samba file sharing.
The only reason you might want to consider Samba over NFS, is because it
works better with Windows operating systems.
It also includes other services that can be integrated with your organization
like printer services, we'll talk about printer services in an upcoming slides.
When you create a Windows shared folder it's actually using the SMB
protocol, Samba itself is a software service suite used for file services
which you can also read more about in the supplemental reading
Setting them up really depends of how many printers you have and how
many people are in your company.
In a small company with less than a hundred people, setting up one or two
commercial printers should be more than enough.
To set up a print server, all you have to do is install a print service on a
server.