[OpenAFS-devel] Re: [OpenAFS] OpenAFS.org web site design project

[Doug Hirsch]

Jeffrey,

The "New to FreeBSD" link is a wonderful model.

Just to remind you of my situation, I have followed these mailing
lists for nearly two years, I consider myself an AFS groupie (love you
guys!), almost ready to stand up my own reference demo system in spite
of not being a programmer and having most of my system administration
experience twenty years behind me.  I'm not quite a suit--maybe a
sports coat, with much of my time spent defending budgets and how
people spent them.  I'm still trying to get people interested within
my organization in what AFS could do for us and our customers, having
spent six months almost twenty years ago as a junior AFS admin
elsewhere.

My boss just told me over lunch a bunch of the reservations he has
about AFS, the essence of which is that he thinks AFS is "past it",
like Beta versus VHS, though I'm not sure how much of his opinion is
based on understanding of what AFS is, versus the things he thinks it
is like.  In my project's environment, I see a need for a nice, neat,
manageable wide area file system with which we could share VM images
with our partner developers in three facilities, as well as with our
customer's test group.  I think I see an opportunity to introduce and
make use of OpenAFS in a controlled, small audience environment, where
a dozen or so people can get experience using it and seeing its worth.
 Want to talk me out of this effort?  Otherwise, I'm trying to figure
out how to show that this *can* work, in spite of my fumbling with it
for over a year (several reasons beyond my incompetence, like being
across the country from my lab where I have routable IP addresses on
machines I can repartition to my needs), and how to get the
decision-makers in each of the organizations enough on board to have
the necessary support to make a demo.  Just yesterday, I asked for a
subdomain from my company, so I could set up the DNS support for my
demo KDC.  Thankfully, our head of IT has been wanting someone to
explore AFS for him, so I get bits of cooperation here and there, if
not overt support.  Please pass me a current sysadmin, with time to
take on this project for me...

I'm not ready to supply a case study to the archive, but I'm building
the case itself to study, hopefully not as a demonstration of a path
to avoid.

Doug

On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 12:14 PM, Jeffrey Altman
<jaltman@secure-endpoints.com> wrote:
> summatusmentis@gmail.com wrote:
>>> One of the things I'm finding useful about Richard Campbell's book,
>>> Managing AFS: The Andrew File System, is the chapters on business case
>>> studies and the chapter on building the business case for AFS.  I hope
>>> there will be some room in the new web site for people to pay
>>> attention to the human logistics of AFS in addition to the
>>> technology--how do people get their organizations to embrace it, and
>>> how do you keep it financially supported in the IT budget.
>>
>> This is one of the things we'd like to have as part of the site, how
>> people have moved their organizations to AFS, what it took for them
>> convince their superiors, etc. We'd like to have this website
>> multi-targeted, in that it has information for both current users and
>> potential users needing to make a case for it.
>
> The existing site already has a case studies section.  If your
> organization is willing to discuss its use of OpenAFS, please
> forward text to openafs-gatekeepers@openafs.org.
>
>>> Of course, I got very excited in Monday's discussion when someone
>>> proposed a button for newbies.  It is much, much too hard to figure
>>> out how to stand up a reference demo system if you're not already a
>>> programmer or AFS groupie.  Unfortunately, I don't see reference to
>>> that in your project page notes.
>>
>> It's a distinct possibility that I missed  that as part of my notes
>> from Mondays meeting. We are currently still in the early planning
>> stages, there is absolutely room for community involvement and
>> suggestion. Let me go back and see what you mean by "newbie button"and
>> I'll modify the project page.
>
> See the "New to FreeBSD" link on http://www.freebsd.org/
>
> Jeffrey Altman