Samba 3.0 is released

Hi lwn people,

	I thought you might be interested in the following news. We (the
Samba Team) have released Samba 3.0, a major step forward in functionality
in integrating Linux and UNIX with Microsoft Windows clients.

If you would like further details on what what we're delivering in this major new
software release please call me (Jeremy Allison) on (408) 447 0412 between 10am
and 5pm US Pacific Timezone and I'll be happy to answer any questions.

Regards,

	Jeremy Allison,
	Samba Team.

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                      Samba Team Releases Samba 3.0
                      -----------------------------

September 24th 2003.

Windows Domain Migration Release
--------------------------------

The Samba Team is proud to announce the release of Samba 3.0, a major
new release of the award-winning Open Source/Free Software file and
print server suite for Microsoft Windows (R) clients.

Replacement of Windows NT4 (R) Domains
------------------------------------

Samba 3.0 contains the first Open Source/Free Software implementation
of Windows NT Primary and Backup Domain Controller functionality.
Customers can transparently migrate their existing Windows NT domains
to Samba 3.0 whilst keeping their existing user and group account
databases. This enables significant cost of ownership savings over a
Windows NT4 domain as a Samba 3.0 Domain Controller does not require
client access licenses. Existing Windows tools can be used to manage a
Samba PDC, allowing customer Windows expertise to be leveraged in a
domain migration. A choice of LDAP back-ends allows integration with
an existing customer directory service.

Single Sign-on with Active Directory (R) Integration
--------------------------------------------------

Samba 3.0 seamlessly integrates into a Microsoft Active Directory
domain in both native and mixed mode. Samba 3.0 provides single
sign-on for UNIX (R) / Linux (R) clients in an Active Directory
environment, allowing both servers and clients to transparently use
Active Directory as an authentication and account source. Domain trust
relationships are fully supported, allowing Samba 3.0 Controlled
Domains to integrate easily into any Active Directory environment.

Complete Integration with Windows Security
------------------------------------------

Samba 3.0 fully implements Kerberos 5 authentication, SMB signing for
tamper-proof file serving sessions, and SCHANNEL security for secure
remote procedure calls. Samba 3.0 works "out of the box" with the
improved security settings of Windows 2003 Domain Controllers.

A Global File and Print Server
------------------------------

As Samba is a global project, internationalization support is an
important feature. Samba 3.0 now implements UNICODE character sets on
the wire, allowing clients using any character set to connect to a
single file server and store names in their native character sets.

David de Leeuw. Head, Medical Computing Unit
Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel wrote :

"With the release of Samba 3 we are able for the first time to store
our files on the computer servers in any language we want. Filenames
in English, Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, and scores of other languages,
used by our staff and students, mix without problems thanks to the
great new UNICODE support of Samba."

Scalable Printing
-----------------

Samba 3.0 has been tested in production supporting thousands of print
queues with tens of thousands of simultaneous print jobs, providing
the most scalable Windows printing solution on the market. Samba 3.0
fully supports the Windows "point-and-print" driver download feature,
allowing Samba 3.0 to provide a transparent Windows printing
experience.

Comprehensive Documentation
---------------------------

Samba 3.0 ships with the second edition of "Using Samba" by Jay Ts,
Robert Eckstein, and David Collier-Brown (O'Reilly & Associates
(R)). Many thanks to the authors and publisher for making "Using
Samba" available under the GNU Free Documentation License.

In addition, the Samba HOWTO documentation collection has been updated
and improved by John H. Terpstra, Jelmer R. Vernooij and others. As
well being freely available in the Samba 3.0 release it will be
released in a forthcoming book, "The Official Samba-3 HOWTO and
Reference Guide", to be published by Prentice Hall (R).

Award Winning Linux/UNIX and Windows Integration
------------------------------------------------

Samba has won many awards for providing Windows and Linux/UNIX
connectivity. Last year, Samba was awarded the Innovation in
Infrastructure prize in the "Enterprise Software" category by eWeek
and PC Magazine, beating out such competitors as the Java 2 Platform.

David A. Licosati, Vice President, InoStor Corporation said :

"Samba 3.0 goes beyond expectations.  The team's work allows us to
penetrate markets and open up new areas of deployments heretofore
unobtainable."

Samba is the leading choice for Windows connectivity
----------------------------------------------------

Samba 3.0 is fully portable, POSIX compliant software that runs on a
variety of UNIX and UNIX-like systems including AIX (R), DG/UX (R),
FreeBSD, HPUX(R), IRIX (R), Linux (R), Mac OS X (R) and Solaris
(R). Samba is shipped as standard on all versions of Linux, and most
of the major vendors versions of UNIX as a fully supported part of the
operating system.

Getting Samba 3.0
-----------------

Samba 3.0 is available now from the Samba Web site and all worldwide
mirrors.

www.samba.org

About the Samba Team
--------------------

The Samba Team is a worldwide group of computer professionals working
together via the Internet to produce the highest quality Open
Source/Free Software Windows (SMB/CIFS) server software.

              Samba - "Opening Windows to a Wider World"