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How ownCloud and SerNet worked together to improve the SMB protocol, is described in a new blog post from ownCloud. Read about it in the article "Windows Network Drive integration benefits from Samba contributions".

The text emphasizes, how Open Source Collaboration can prove to be an important and stimulatory factor for projects. In this case, ownCloud engineers worked together with longtime Samba expert Volker Lendecke at SerNet. This resulted in notifications for smb-client implemented in the SMB2 and SMB3 protocol, subsequently boosting performance and bringing more reliability to the windows network drive integration. So – to quote ownCloud: "the professionals at SerNet have your back."

In light of last week's sambaXP, SerNet announced two novelties to its Samba portfolio: SAMBA+ LTS and SAMBA+ support budgets. While SAMBA+ LTS prolongs security updates for SAMBA+ packages, support budgets grant easy access to professional Samba services.

SAMBA+ LTS (discontinued as of 2021)

SAMBA+ Long Term Support (LTS) packages provide the well-known SAMBA+ packages, but with 36 month security updates instead of 18. This extends the lifecycle significantly and leads to reduced costs, especially for OEMs.

SerNet will provide the security updates pretty soon after the upstream Samba releases to ensure that systems are protected against the known defects as soon as possible. We will start with SAMBA+ 4.3, 4.4 and 4.5. SAMBA+LTS is already available in the SAMBA+ shop.

SAMBA+  support budgets

To make services even more accessible, SerNet is adding support budgets to its regular support contracts with Service Level Agreements. Support budgets can be purchased directly from the SAMBA+ shop and are ready for immediate redemption. This guarantees customers even faster access to the know-how of our experienced SAMBA+ team. In short: You buy the support budget, we start working on your requests. The support budget not only covers services around SAMBA+ but rather requests regarding overall CIFS/SMB (Samba, Microsoft Windows), AFP/Netatalk, Linux (Debian, Ubuntu, RHEL, Fedora, SLES, Leap), Unix (AIX, Solaris, HP-UX), Directory Services (Active Directory, LDAP), Printing (CUPS), Infrastructure
(DNS, DHCP, SSL). Another advantage: Within the SAMBA+ support budget, the billing rate is identical for all types of services.

A SAMBA+ support budget includes 10 service hours, invoiced in time units of at least 15 minutes. Once purchased, budgets can be redeemed for 24 months. A total of 4 budgets can be purchased at once and used for a project of up to 40 hours. More details on our SAMBA+ Support page or directly in the SAMBA+ shop.

SerNet colleague Björn Baumbach has been appointed as official member of the Samba Core Team. The independent team consists of 40 people from all over the world who contribute regularly to Samba and have direct write access to the repository.

Baumbach recently contributed to the extensions of the "samba-tool" command. In addition, he has been supporting the Core Team for several years maintaining the server infrastructure, actively participates in discussions on the further development of Samba and contributes bugfixes. As a trained application developer Björn Baumbach joined SerNet 8 years ago. He works in the IT Security department as well as in
SerNet's own SAMBA+ team.

Six SerNet employees are now members of the Samba Core Team. Besides Baumbach these are Karolin Seeger, Ralph Böhme, Björn Jacke, Volker Lendecke and Stefan Metzmacher.