[OpenAFS] Providing Openafs Support

[Sam Hartman]

Comments raised on this list and at the AFS Workshop at last week's
Usenix conference demonstrate the need for commercial support for
Openafs.  


I'd like to introduce my company, Mekinok.  Mekinok specializes in
delivering customized, reliable, maintainable and scalable
infrastructure solutions that save time and reduce frustration.  Our
solutions include AFS, Kerberos and several other related
technologies.

There are many AFS support services we can provide today.  We can help
with new cell setup, migration from kaserver to Kerberos version 5,
integration of AFS into new environments, general problem solving/bug
fixing and setting up tools to ease AFS administration.  We also have
sufficient experience with AFS, Kerberos and related technologies to
take on development projects, bringing in additional resources for larger
projects.  To evaluate the quality of our work, we suggest looking at
the Boxed Penguin prototype (http://www.boxedpenguin.com/) or more
specifically, the Debian Openafs packages.  We believe our integration
of Openafs into Debian provides the simplest way to set up a new AFS
cell and Kerberos version 5 realm available today.  The procedure is
significantly simpler than setting up a kaserver cell using the IBM
instructions.


For more information about Mekinok, please look at our web page at
http://www.mekinok.com/.  

Also, as discussed at the AFS BOF last week, we believe it would be a
good idea to set up a community support web site.  On this web site,
companies could indicate their interest in providing commercial AFS
support and briefly describe themselves and their capabilities.  In
addition, providing information about what services potential customers
would be interested in would help support providers better meet the
needs of the community.  Would this be appropriate content for
openafs.org or central.org?