File server considerations

As with most things in the Linux world, there is more than one way of accomplishing any goal. With each method, there are a multitude of best practices and caveats to understand before implementing a solution. As mentioned earlier, the three most common methods of sharing files from one Linux system to another are Network File System (NFS), Samba, and Secure Shell File System (SSHFS). Each of these three primarily serve different needs, and your network layout will determine which you should use.

The first consideration while designing a network file server is what types of platforms will need to access its files. NFS is often a great choice within a Linux-based environment; however, it doesn't handle mixed environments as well, so you may not want to choose it if you have Windows machines on your network that you need to share files with. It's not that you can't access NFS shares on Windows systems (you certainly can), but Microsoft limits NFS availability (called...