SerNet has released SAMBA+ 4.25.0 for SUSE and Red Hat platforms, as well as for Debian GNU/Linux, Ubuntu and AIX.
This is the first stable SAMBA+ release of the new 4.25 release series. Please read the release notes carefully before upgrading.
Experimental support for SMB3 Persistent Handles marks the highlight of this release – developed at SerNet and contributed upstream to Samba. Persistent Handles allow SMB clients to reconnect after a server restart or outage while retaining valid file handles. This is a fundamental building block for SMB Transparent Failover, helping applications maintain uninterrupted access to files across server failures. Typical use cases include virtual machine storage and clustered databases.
Transparent Failover and Persistent Handles complete one milestone of the Samba development project funded by Germany's Sovereign Tech Agency (more on the STF project).
Ceph, clustering and CTDB
The new ceph_rgw vfs module is currently available for Debian 13 (Trixie) and Ubuntu 26.04 LTS (Resolute). It exports Ceph Object Gateway buckets as SMB shares with a hierarchical view of the stored objects. Vinit Agnihotri (IBM) presented the module at sambaXP 2026.
Other new features concerning clustered setups:
- Cluster-wide rate limiting in vfs_aio_ratelimit enforces the configured per-share limits as a global ceiling across the cluster instead of per node.
- CTDB Locks, PID files and sockets now use ctdb/ subdirectories of the Samba locations.
- Monitoring of network infrastructure such as DNS or AD servers is now supported. Warnings are logged when infrastructure has been missing or failing beyond configured thresholds, which makes root cause analysis after unexplained timeouts considerably easier.
Looking ahead, Samba now maintains a cluster functional level, a cluster-wide value that gates changes affecting the communication between nodes. This prepares rolling upgrades under certain conditions in future versions. It does not apply to upgrades with 4.25 as the target.
A full overview of all changes and enhancements is available in the Samba release notes:
Instructions for package access and upgrading are available in the SAMBA+ How-to collection.
Release series lifecycle
SAMBA+ packages are built by the Samba developers at SerNet from a single source package, maintained across the supported release series and backed by commercial support. They ship Samba's full feature set, including the AD domain controller and clustering with CephFS, GlusterFS and Spectrum Scale support built in. More reasons to use SAMBA+.
With the new 4.25 release Samba 4.24 has been turned into the "maintenance mode" and Samba 4.23 into the "security fixes only mode". Samba 4.22 will probably not receive any updates beyond this point. The SAMBA+ 4.22 repositories will be disabled soon. Please update to a more recent version of SAMBA+.
SAMBA+ packages are delivered under a subscription model and are available in the SAMBA+ shop:
If you already have an active subscription, the new 4.25.0 packages are included. For questions about licensing, procurement, or help with the update, contact the SAMBA+ team at SerNet.
