[OpenAFS] performance stats

Jason Edgecombe jason@rampaginggeek.com
Fri, 28 Sep 2007 17:50:22 -0400


David Bear wrote:
> I think this gets beaten every six months, but I wonder if there are
> any current metrix that compare openafs and cifs when working on
> standard 'office' style documents. I'm interested in performance on 
>
> first open,
> subsequent open of same file
> save
>
> I know there is huge variability between applications so that a Word
> document may open much fast than a wordperfect doc... so this type of
> measure may not even be possible to make accurately. 
>
> I'm just curious if anyone as tried, and what the results were.
>
> We are finding that cifs performance is very BAD over a WAN and I'm
> guessing that the checkpoint vpn software the we MUST run is a
> contributing factor. We can't trust cifs over the wider internet
> without vpn. We can trust afs. But there are still some microsoft
> diehards that just don't think anything else could work. 
>
> My assumptions are the afs should perform better becuase
> 1) we don't need to tunnel through a vpn 
> 2) cache manager should make these work better over a WAN where we
> don't control the end to end bandwidth -- i.e. over the commodity
> internet.
>
> Since we need to support roaming faculty that connect in hotel
> lobbies, conferences, etc., we need something that is going to be
> fairly tolerant of changing network conditions.
>
>   
Hi,

Don't throw away that VPN just yet. If you need your file sharing
traffic to be strongly encrypted, then you should continue to use a VPN.
Authentication for access uses kerberos which is top notch, but file
traffic encryption is abysmal. Some diligent people are working on
improving the encryption, but it's not ready yet. If you're not worried
about traffic sniffers and just want authenticated file access, then
OpenAFS will fit the bill nicely.

I'm just saying that you will need to keep using the VPN in the short
term if your want file traffic encrypted with AFS.

Sincerely,
Jason