[OpenAFS] AFS file-number, volume-size limits?

[Eben Calhoun]

Hello,

I am using AFS extensively in a laboratory environment.  One part of our 
data analysis requires many files to be in one directory.  ( > 32000 files )

Does anyone know whether there is some fixed-limit as to how many files 
one can have in a single directory?  If not, are there some parameters I 
could tune that would increase that number?

Yes, I know I should have less files in one directory, but 3rd-party 
software mandates that mess.

Also, what is the actual size limit of an OpenAFS volume?  I've read in 
many places that it is around 8GB.  One of my volumes has over 13GB's in 
it.  Is this a problem?

What is OpenAFS being used for?

I have been organizing fair-sized DNA sequencing datasets by gene, and 
have one AFS volume per gene.  Some gene datasets are > 8GB, and I have 
left those on NFS as a precaution.  This has worked-out, as in the past 
I had 10 or so data analysts pummeling our network over NFS.  Near 
project deadlines work really crawled as the NFS traffic skyrocketed. 
Now with 20GB local caches, network traffic has dropped-off 
substantially, and performance has been stated by the users as being 
'consistent' across the most recent project cycle.  We've got ~ 650GB of 
data stored in AFS across 600+ volumes, with disk space for another 7TB 
of data.  All of which gets backed-up by AFS backup to a large DLT 
library.  So I get a neatly-organized storage system and the users are 
happy with the performance.  Everybody wins!

Thanks!
    -Eben Calhoun