[OpenAFS] OpenAFS Citrix & Windows 2000 client stability

[Frank J. Cameron]

My experience is with the Transarc client on Citrix not OpenAFS; but 
since Patch 2 the client has been stable and since Patch 3 its been a 
rock.  Patch 3 also fixed some issues we had with Windows 2000 RAS 
clients accessing AFS over the dial-up link ('afsdacl -set' is great for 
laptops).

As for speed, well some of the MCSE's complained that AFS was slow so I 
did some testing copying file sets (I lost the actual numbers, though):

'Small' from Server:   NetWare faster than AFS faster than NT, first run
                                AFS faster than NetWare faster than NT, 
subsequent runs (cache effect)
'Small' to Server:       NetWare faster than AFS faster than NT, all runs
'Large' from Server:  NetWare faster than AFS faster than NT, all runs
'Large' to Server:      NetWare faster than NT faster than AFS (by small 
margin), all runs

The tests were all run from the same W2K Citrix server to an NT server 
on the same switch,  a NetWare server 5 hops away, and an AFS server 
(Sun box, AFS 3.5) 3 hops away.  The NT and NetWare boxes were both 
newish Proliants.

The cache on the Windows client uses a memory-mapped file and requires 
enough virtual memory to hold it; keep that in mind when increasing the 
size.  I testing I did up the cache on a Citrix box to 512M with no 
apparent ill effect.

You should be able to find some info in the archives about the 
advantages and limitations of using a Samba gateway.

-frank

Jason Garman wrote:

>I'm currently evaluating network filesystems for a unified Windows/Unix
>network.  AFS seems like a logical choice because of its cross platform
>support as well as its integration with Kerberos, which can also be used
>to authenticate W2k clients.  I have all of the basics working
>(authentication on both Unix and Windows through the central Kerberos
>server, filesystem access from both platforms) but was wondering what
>issues and experiences people have had with the Windows client.  I'm
>especially interested in hearing from people who are using the client in a
>Terminal Services/Citrix environment.
>
>I've heard that the Windows client is significantly slower than the Unix
>clients, and this has been my experience as well.  I also see that the
>default cache file size is only 25MB, which I'd like to increase to at
>least a couple of gigs.
>
>So is there anyone out there using the OpenAFS W2k client in a production
>Citrix environment?  What stability issues, if any, have you experienced?
>Am I better off setting up a box that runs samba for the Citrix boxes to
>connect to?
>
>Thanks for your input!
>