sane way to use zentyal samba in production?

[kerridge0]

Hi

Is there any way to use this software in production without buying a subscription?

What would you download? I am trying 3.0 now.

excuse the lack of sleep RANT:

Since October while testing zentyal with one customer, I have run around repeatedly in circles with showstopping bugs in Zentyal.

I don't remember this in the old days. Sure there were problems but it was possible to work out how to work around it.

just now I feel I will have to just install Samba 4 directly and bin Zentyal as it's not worth the problems. Subscription soon costs more than MS 2012 essentials which just seems wrong.

I would even be happy to pay for access to the stable update stream and but with only community support? Say 40 - 80 Eur per server per year?

The pain of using this software due to so many moving parts and massive fails is insane. 

 /RANT

[christian]

What would you download? I am trying 3.0 now.

What do you need ? 
I'm happily running 2.2 without any major problem and this fits my needs 
If 2.x doesn't fit for your, then 3.0 in the 3.x range is perhaps not the best choice as this is the first 3.x version thus you can expect more problems than with latest versions.
This said, although I can't suggest anything that I don't use, I would rather look at 3.2 matching the last LTS before Zentyal changed their release policy.

[robb]

Kerridge0, I think you are making a huge thinking error comparing the costs of _licensing_ of Windows Server with the costs of _support_ of Zentyal.

If you are looking for a Samba4 implementation, I personally would opt for Zentyal 3.2 or a completely other solution like http://www.enterprisesamba.com/samba4app/ or https://susestudio.com/a/veav1Y/excellent-samba4-appliance

[kerridge0]

Yes the siren lure of AD is what's dragging me towards 3.x 

You see I installed 3.2 but the dns server just kept dying so it had to be manually restarted every few weeks which is a critical component. I then had a disaster with ACLS getting so I upgraded (!) and it broke even further. Now it jsut runs at 100% cpu.

I'm worried if I use 3.2 I'll run into the same problems. But at least with 3.2 you can turn off ACLs so maybe I'll reinstall that. I do have a 3.0 install just whirring away.

As for the difference between buying support and a product, currently you do effectively buy support with Microsoft in the form of updates to the software and access to their support pages. I haven't had the opportunity to try Zentyal support but the only time I had the opportunity to use MS support (with a non-working Office 2007 install) they told me to reinstall the operating system.... It just wasn't useful to me. Maybe to others?

It's surely an unfair comparison given the resources of MS and the fact that Zentyal has to survive but that's just how I feel.