[OpenAFS] Replicas as backups for home directory volumes

[Simeon Miteff]

Hi All

We've got AFS running on one server with fast SCSI disks, and we have
another machine with slow IDE disks that we'd like to use for
backups-to-disk.

I would like to provide both stupidity-protection and disaster-protection.

Now I've read about clone volumes (vos backupsys), for the former and
the backup system, or vos dump for the latter, but I've got another
idea:

Would it work if I set up the backup machine as a file-server, and
replicate all the user volumes onto it? From what I've understood about
the AFS client's bias toward RO volumes, this would mean that I would
have to make the user volume mounts explicity "-rw". Now if I mount the
RO volume (located on the backup box) on ~/.backup, and vos release every
user volume once a day, am I not killing two birds with one stone?

It sounds like a simple and elegant plan to me, but I have a feeling
that I'm missing something important, and this kind of thing is really
a Bad Idea.

Any thoughts?

Regards,
Simeon.