I have two VLANs. Clients are on one VLAN and there are a couple servers (including a file server) on another VLAN. I have L3 routing between the VLANs. Clients can ping the servers' IP addresses and can also (via net use) access SMB shares directly by IP.
However, what we need is for the servers to appear automatically in the "Network" list in Windows Explorer. From what I understand we need a WINS server. I've had absolutely zero experience with NetBIOS and so I'm a bit confused on what our options are.
First of all, on Linux, I'm very much aware that samba can function as a WINS server. However, our file server is a standalone unit (Synology), and the other servers (which are not hosting SMB shares) also need to be available via NetBIOS. What we need is a standalone WINS server that can be configured manually. I don't think samba fits our needs here.
Second, if I set up a WINS server, do clients need to be specifically configured to use it? We want a system, if possible, that requires no manual configuration on the clients.
We also run our own DNS server which is already configured on clients via DHCP, and the file server is reachable by its DNS hostname, but just not via NetBIOS. Some systems can use DNS (specifically, I do know that SMB can use DNS for name resolution) but we also have software that only uses NetBIOS, so pure DNS is not an option.
(Additionally, we do not want to use Windows Server for WINS. By my understanding, if we were to do this, each client that ever queried the nameserver would require a CAL; this would require a lot more CALs than we currently need, so we really want to avoid that.)
Best Answer
NetBIOS traffic is broadcast based. As a result, you have a few options available to you:
A. Allow broadcast traffic to transit the router between VLAN's. This is probably not the preferred method for dealing with this and the results may be inconsistent.
B. Implement a WINS server as you propose in your question. If you do there are a couple of things to know:
In order for WINS clients to register in WINS they need to be configured to use WINS. You can do this by assigning the WINS server to the clients in your DHCP options the same way you assign DNS servers and the Default Gateway to the clients. This assumes that you're using DHCP to assign IP address information to the clients.
If you're manually assigning IP address information to your clients then you'll need to "touch" each client in order to assign the WINS server to each client.
You can use the WINS server of your choice, just know that in order for the clients to use and register with WINS they need to be configured to use the WINS server.