[OpenAFS] client/server-machines

[Derrick J Brashear]

On Thu, 26 Sep 2002, Felix Matschke wrote:

> My questions:
> 1) Acces of a client-process on a volume on the same machine: Does this
> access stay local on the machine (except perhaps update requests to other
> server-processes on other machines) or will it slow down the file access
> significantly?

if you set up a cell per machine, yes, but i don't think that's what you
want. otherwise you have some (small, but some) traffic to database
servers to point at your local data. but, it doesn't just re-export a
local file system, it has it's own file store which isn't intended to be
accessed directly, but only through afs, so of course it won't be as fast
as local disk

> 2) Sometimes the Windows DOES hang. Are frequently hanging server-machines a
> bigger problem for the cell? One machine is an very frequently disconnected
> laptop. Should this machine be only a client?

hung server is a problem only if you want to access data from or replicate
data to it, or if it happens to be a database server for some other (set
of) machines. 

> 3) The idea of making EVERY machine a server comes from the fact of working
> locally most of the time and being able to backup with the automatic
> routines. Intelligent or problem-prone?

if you're going to use windows machines, you'll be sad. if you're going to
make your users administer their own afs space, you may make them sad.
unless you monitor carefully the space usage on those machines, you'll
probably run into problems