Best Way to “Connect” Windows Server 2003 & Ubuntu 10

Question

If I have two servers, one running Windows Server 2003, and one running Ubuntu 10, what would be the best way to 'map' one's drive to another? Either way is fine. They are each in a different state, and each have an external IP. I just need to do some processing on the Ubuntu server, then write the file either to its own drive, and have the web server (Windows) read it, or, have it write to the Windows HDD, and have Windows read it.

Answer 1

The best thing you can do, as the link between the two servers isn't a 'reliable' link (i.e., dedicated connection but subject to third party outages) is to create the file locally on the Ubuntu box and then copy it across to the Windows machine when it is complete.

Mounting filesystems or shares across an unreliable link can cause many problems with systems freezing as they try to access a filesystem that isn't there, etc.

The program I would recommend for copying the data across depends on how sensitive the data is.

If you're not worried about encrypting the data, or if you already have encryption in place (say a VPN) then the smbclient program, which operates very much like FTP but on windows shares, would probably be the easiest:

$ smbclient '\\server\share' -I <ip address> -A /path/to/authentication/file -c "put myfile.dat"

Or something similar. The smbclient manual page can be found here

If you are more worried about security then I would recommend installing a SSH server on the windows machine and using scp to copy the file across.

Answer 2

You could setup Samba + OpenVPN and map the Ubuntu drive into the Windows. Or, you could setup an SSH channel between them and use rsync in daemon mode to monitor the data changes. I would go with the first option - it is easier to setup.