[ SPAM? ] [OpenAFS] Read-only replication

[Jaap Winius]

Quoting Lars Schimmer <l.schimmer@cgv.tugraz.at>:

> Simple - Load Balancing. Imagine a cell at three countries hold together
> by small ISDN lines - a RO copy local to each faculty and the have fast
> access.

Yes, but "In an organization where it is only necessary for an =20
administrator to
either give users read-write access to volumes, or no access at all," =20
what good is that? As far as I can tell, in your scenario the clients =20
at the two remote sites would have a bias towards reading the (for =20
them) remote read-write replicas and thus ignore any local read-only =20
copies.

Of course, you could also try to explain to those users that they =20
should use one path to read stuff (because it's faster) and another to =20
write or add new files, but I doubt that would go down very well with =20
them.

Cheers,

Jaap

PS -- I just thought of one reason why replicas would help, even in my =20
hypothetical "read-write or nothing" organization above: if one extra =20
server has read-only copies of everything, the volumes can be backed =20
up any any time without bothering anybody.