[OpenAFS] What filesystem?

[Horst Birthelmer]

On Mar 3, 2006, at 10:11 PM, John Bass wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I hope everyone doesn't mind if I repeat a question.  One of the  
> few responses I did get said I should be more complete in asking my  
> question.
>
> My boss is trying to choose one distributed file system from NFS  
> and MS-DFS and so on, from my feeling, AFS sounds like the best  
> choice, it is secure and is being used by many large institutes,  
> such as  Harvard, MIT, NASA, Stanford, etc.   Actually  
> GrandCentral.org says they use it, I cant tell for sure if that  
> means the whole place, or one department, or a couple of people in  
> a lab.

A comparison between those three file systems would be highly unfair.
First, because we (the people on the list) wouldn't be that  
objective ;-) and second, because they're very different and neither  
of them will solve all of your file providing problems in your  
organization.
What features you're defining as important and which you'll never  
going to need is up to you.

Keep in mind - no matter how you and/or your boss will decide - that  
AFS is a _distributed_ file system.
It does start to make sense if you have more file servers.
It is highly scalable from one fileserver (which is kinda trivial) to  
a complete distributed cell with servers placed all over the world.  
You can choose any level of distribution in between.

...

> Anybody can see that some of very smart people made and use AFS,  
> but how can an overworked person like me convince my also  
> overworked boss that we should spend the money and time necessary  
> to learn, deploy, train, and support AFS enterprize-wide?

This is something for you to decide...
It will definitely cost you some money and time.

Horst