[OpenAFS] Home directory in AFS

[Ken Hornstein]

>I have all my users on ONE volume 'user'. I got a reply earlier (see
>earlier mail's on the thread) that it should be more scalable if every
>user had their own volume, but "I'm a sceptic" :)

AFS's scalability really comes from having multiple fileservers.  You
can get scalability by spreading the load out across machines.  AFS's
strength is that is really easy.

Let me save you some pain, though.  A number of operations (like volume
clones, dumps, backups, moves) are dependent on the size of the volume
(the number of inodes is a more important factor than the size of all
the files, in my experience).  Cramming EVERYONE into one volume is going
to make administration of that volume a nightmare; dumps will take forever,
moves will lock _all_ users instead of just one, and even a nightly
backupsys run will affect everyone.  Experience has shown _us_ that you
tend to want to manage volumes on a per-user boundary; if you have a user
who tends to use more space, you can move just their volume.  If a user
deletes a file, you just have to restore their volume rather than EVERYONE's
volume.

--Ken