[OpenAFS] AFS design question: implementing AFS over a highly-distributed, low-bandwidth network

[Derrick Brashear]

On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 1:33 PM, Chaz Chandler <clc31@inbox.com> wrote:
> Thanks for everyone's replies!
>
> So far, in summary:
> 1) There should be a separate cell at each site.  This avoids quorum and and local client server selection difficulties that arise in a VPN environment.
> 2) There is no good AFS-based solution for group shares in this scenario.

i don't agree with that, but it depends on your interpretation.

> 3) All volumes that need to be read from or written to at LAN speeds at multiple sites must be replicated via custom scripts.
> 4) Disconnected operations would be nice, but are currently not implemented at a level of completeness suitable for a production environment.  Traveling users will simply have to access AFS through the VPN and deal with the slow speed!

it's actively getting closer right now. you can thank Simon Wilkinson for that.
>
> Further questions:
> a) What is the best way to replicate a volume across cells?
> b) How would the presence of multiple cells effect the krb5 infrastructure (currently: one realm, one cell, cell name = realm name = internal LAN domain name)?

it doesn't have to be. you can have many cells in a realm, for
instance, the sipb.mit.edu, athena.mit.edu, etc cells in the
ATHENA.MIT.EDU realm.

> c) Are any of the Morgan Stanley volume management system utilities available publicly, or are their methods sufficiently documented publicly?  All of what I've read about them are from previous afsbpw's. (ie, http://workshop.openafs.org/afsbpw08/talks/wed_1/OpenAFS_and_the_Dawn_of_a_New_Era.pdf)

as far as i know none of their tools are distributed at this time.