[OpenAFS] New to OpenAFS

[Christopher D. Clausen]

billbaird3 <billbaird3@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm new to OpenAFS and was hoping if the community could help me
> determine if it would be a good fit for my company. We are approx 150
> people, with 50 home users and the rest in small offices of about
> 10-15 people. I would like to have a main file server that everyone
> can access, but also departmental servers in offices that would allow
> people to save files quickly (without going over the WAN).

What operating system are these users running?  If you are running 
nearly all Microsoft Windows machine, you probably want to at least look 
at Microsoft's Distributed FileSystem (Dfs.)  It allows for multi-master 
read-write replicas and a user-defined site topology to optimize 
replication and allowing clients to find the closest replica.  Be aware 
that Dfs is not encrypted and is not a true WAN filesystem.  Microsoft 
recomends using IPsec to secure connections.  There is also no caching 
by default (one would need to setup Offline Folders functionality to 
cache files locally on the computer.)

While AFS is very useful in heterogeneous environments, there may be a 
better choice if only a single operating system is in use.

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