Re: Distributed File Systems. Which is best?

[Stephen Lord <lord@sgi.com>]

Jason White wrote:

>pac@fortuitous.com writes:
> > > > 
> > > > Why not consider
> > > > c. OpenAFS (http://www.openafs.org/) which I have never used, but
> > > > apparently it works (or at least used to work/has been rumored to
> > > > work) with XFS as the underlying file system on the AFS partitions.
> > 
> >   I'll consider it. But that still leaves us where we started. 
> > Has anyone Used any of these, and why are there so many projects
> > working independently of each other, and which is the most reliable?
>
>AFS has a strong reputation for reliability, and it is
>also the oldest of the systems mentioned, having been used widely in
>university and corporate settings for years. However I am not
>acquainted with its reliability or performance under XFS.
>
>As to why there are so many projects in this area, I suspect a number
>of reasons, including different design goals, some projects being
>newer than others (the desire for a "fresh start" with a different
>approach to the design), etc.
>
If you dig back in the xfs list archives, you should find some references to
open AFS. Someone, I cannot remember who, got it all working and made
patches available. AFS does have XFS support built in, but it is Irix XFS
support getting linux XFS going required some work.

Steve