[OpenAFS] the future

[Troy Benjegerdes]

On Mon, Oct 01, 2012 at 07:55:36AM +0200, Lars Schimmer wrote:
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> On 2012-10-01 06:48, Troy Benjegerdes wrote:
> > On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 11:38:10PM +0200, Lars Schimmer wrote:
> >> On 30.09.2012 21:10, Troy Benjegerdes wrote:
> >> 
> >>> One-time deals (on linux) that require interaction will blow up
> >>> all kinds of automated tools and leave the rank and file admins
> >>> your enemy.
> >> 
> >> Easy, user do call admins angry and stupid. And Admins change
> >> OpenAFS to NFS/SMB/or anything else, which is free and easy to
> >> deploy. Nearly everything is free, functional and already
> >> included. Why hassle with more work, incompatible licenses and
> >> all the user support?
> > 
> > Having migrated from NFSv3 to AFS (and then OpenAFS), I'd have to
> > say that NFS may be free, but it doesn't really fall into the
> > 'functional' category. But this was several years ago, so there
> > might have been some magic that happened with NFS I haven't seen
> > yet.
> > 
> > Can anyone who has experience migrating to/from OpenAFS from/to
> > anything else in the last 2-3 years please comment? If there's
> > really something free, functional, and already included then I'd
> > like to know what the heck it is.
> 
> Just buy a NetApp storage, everything for windows roaming is included
> and simple and easy.
> No need to hassle with extra fileservers, extra admin work, extra
> bugs, extra "loose of function" like alternate datastreams,...
> Life can be easy.
> On the other side, why pay for OpenAFS in kind of licenses, support,
> admin hour,... if you already got everything you need in the storage
> device?
> And why pay if it is open source? Life isn?t as easy as this at all...
> 
> (and yeah, IF you go big and have a datacenter, you already HAVE these
> storages, everything else would be a horrible nightmare. But small
> groups like ours here with 10 people usual do not have/need OpenAFS,
> so that discussion is nonesense at all. If you are a small group, you
> have something easy and simple like NFS or SMB which cost no extra
> support, if you are big, you have the storage with everything
> included. Where goes OpenAFS?)

Because you don't expose your internal group NFS/SMB share to collaborators
in another timezone, and central IT policy won't let you expose the Netapp.

AFS is the only thing besides GPFS (also from IBM) that I have ever heard
of someone talking seriously about cross-site/cross-continent file sharing.
(Okay, I did a remote mount of PVFS over 6000 miles, but that was an SC
demo stunt)

If you actually want to *share* it, AFS is the way to go. I think if we 
are trying to 'keep' admins and small groups that don't understand the
value of sharing, it would be better if they *did* migrate to a department
nfs/smb (un)share and unshare themselves into irrelevance.

If admins and CIO's don't understand the value of having a filesystem 
that just politely *asks* for a donation, and get irate at some additional
text in aklog & tokens output, then I think we all might be better served
if they choose a solution like Google drive that's simple, easy, free, and
then feeds you ads and mines your data for you too. Then YFS can buy some
google ads and get them back as paying customers when the figure out what
they are missing.