Re: AFS

[Tim Sailer <sailer@bnl.gov>]

On Wed, Feb 28, 2001 at 01:30:00PM +0100, Turbo Fredriksson wrote:
> >>>>> "Matthew" == Matthew Palmer <mjp16@ieee.uow.edu.au> writes:
> 
>     Matthew> On Sun, 25 Feb 2001, Viral wrote:
>     >> Has anyone used the Andrew File System (AFS) for a cluster ?
>     >> Its already packaged for debian, and sounds good.
>     >> 
>     >> How does it compare to NFS ?
> 
>     Matthew> AFS is a more secure, high performance alternative to
>     Matthew> NFS.
> 
> I assume that every UN*X administrator worth his/her salt have been taught that
> NFS is a absolute NO-NO on the Internet (or at least should be avoided at all cost :).
> 
> How does AFS stand in all this? I know it needs kerberos, but that's about all I
> know simply because AFS haven't been (easily?) available to Linux.. Is it now?

AFS was designed for WAN use. It uses a local cache directory for files that
are being used. Enough local disk, and a tuned cache directory are important
to speed and stability. AFS had used only krb4, but there were ports to
krb5 (from nrl.gov), and now with openAFS, they are 'mainstream'.  I'd
take a serious look at AFS if you want clustering and/or WAN filesystems.

Tim

-- 
Tim Sailer <sailer@bnl.gov> 
Information Technology Division
Brookhaven National Laboratory  (631) 344-3001