[OpenAFS] Windows cache rehashed...

[Jason Young]

--On Tuesday, December 16, 2003 12:39 PM -0500 Rodney M Dyer
<rmdyer@uncc.edu> wrote:

> Do any of you (how many of you) also use AFS space for running
> applications from?  Big apps?  Many apps?

On Solaris - just about everything comes out of AFS.  Linux, unless it came
in the RedHat distribution, it's in AFS.   I'm not sure with MacOS, because
we don't have any College supported MacOS labs (the University does though
- I think there it's mostly local to the machine, with updates/fixes
sourced out of AFS).  

With Windows, not as many anymore - but that's mostly because of other
technology/political choices made on campus and because of Windows itself.
We still have a few though - mostly applications that are on all three lab
platforms in the College of Engineering, that have little or no local files
requirement, and that we are responsible for deploying ourselves (rather
than another campus group) This includes the JDK, StarOffice, Cadra, and
CPLEX/AMPL.  

We've had some odd problems here and there with the applications
performance-wise, some of this has been difficult to troubleshoot, but
usually ended up being some kind of messed up RO replica (in one case) or a
mismatched duplex on the client or somebody's servers (or in a case with
one big lab, a duplex mismatch between the building entry switch and the
lab switches) - rather than some issue with AFS itself.  We do little or no
tuning, mostly because it's a little over our heads and we don't have time
or even smart part-timers to throw at doing some testing for us.

We'd probably do more applications from AFS but the majority of our Windows
application set is built on top of the Novell tools that are used by the
central Academic IT group.  These Novell tools tend to interact better with
NetWare servers and the windows side of the central Academic IT group is
oriented more in the direction of using Netware than AFS.  Additionally,
Windows applications being the total poorly designed, pain in the ass that
they are, especially the Engineering ones, tend to require or work a whole
lot better with a significant, locally-installed footprint.  We use the
aforementioned Novell tools supplied/used by the central Academic IT group
to manage those local files and settings - and the installer source for
these files comes off NetWare servers (because, again, the application
management tools tend to understand NetWare a little better than even a
persistent drive mapping to AFS).  The Central Academic IT group has
invested a pretty sizeable amount of time and money into a SAN and using
NetWare Clustering to achieve the AFS replica-like model with the storage
that backs the NetWare-delivered applications - with relatively similar
high availability now. 

So with all that said AFS from Windows, here at NCSU, is mostly about data
storage and data sharing, more than app delivery.

Jason

----------------------------------------------------
 Jason Young  # ITECS Systems Group Manager
 NC State University College of Engineering