[OpenAFS] Strategies for Migrating from IBM AFS to OpenAFS

[Jeffrey Hutzelman]

On Fri, 24 May 2002, Charles Clancy wrote:

> >  Is a conversion as simple as just updating the /usr/afs/bin with the new binaries
> >  like we used to do with a new Transarc code?
>
> Yes.  One of the main requirements of OpenAFS was that it had to maintain
> 100% compatability with IBM-AFS.  You can run any mixture of clients and
> servers you like, but you may not get the benifit of some of OpenAFS's new
> features until everything is OpenAFS.

Note that that won't necessarily be true forever.  But it is certainly
likely that OpenAFS will continue to maintain considerably better
cross-version compatibility than Transarc or IBM ever promised.

> I upgraded two cells (total of 4 Solaris servers and around 100 Solaris
> clients) last year from AFS 3.5 to OpenAFS 1.0.4 and 1.1.x without
> difficulty -- just copy files to /usr/afs.  No migrations or conversions
> required.  Old backup tapes worked fine.

Oh, that's nothing.  This morning I upgraded my AFS 3.3a dbservers to
OpenAFS 1.2.6 (still running SunOS 4.1.4!), and everything just worked.


Of course, you should _never_ mix and match AFS versions (IBM AFS or
OpenAFS) between database servers.  All of your ptservers must be the same
version, and all vlservers, and all kaservers, and so on.  Failing to
follow this rule can result in a permanently corrupted database.