Scope and performance: ksmbd and Samba in comparison

"ksmbd", a new kernel module which implements an SMB server, was introduced with Linux Kernel 5.15 in November 2021. The Samba Team at SerNet has posted an article at https://samba.plus in which ksmbd and the existing Samba fileserver "smbd" are addressed in comparison

The article "ksmbd: a new in-kernel SMB server" addresses performance in particular, since ksmbd claims performance improvements on a wide range of benchmarks. It also emphasizes the importance of recent improvements in Samba's IO performance: by leveraging the new "io_uring" Linux API Samba is able to provide roughly 10x the throughput compared to ksmbd.

But overall, the team points out, that ksmbd will integrate with Samba in the future. SerNet’s Samba developers are looking forward to working with and on ksmbd! If there are any questions about ksmbd, smbd and the way forward, feel free to contact us.