[NCLUG] A *nix DFS alternative?

[Michael Milligan]

Have you looked at AFS?  It's been around for a long time and does most
of what you want.  I've been using it for years (servers in multiple
locations, backing each other up), is stable and reliable (I have never
had data loss), and there are client drivers for *nix variants, Windows
and OS X.  But it does have a bit of up-front complexity/learning-curve
to overcome, e.g., to setup your own AFS "cell", you have to setup a
Kerberos KDC for authentication, a volume location service, a protection
service, a couple of file server instances, and a backup service to
automate the backups, special DNS entries so your cell can be found out
in the real world...  it's not hard to do, but might be too much work
for what you want, but what you ask for is not simple in the first
place.  It's a global file system so has a global name space similar to
DFS, in fact, I think Microsoft stole the idea, e.g.,

/afs/athena.mit.edu/project/bagel

would get you to the MIT Athena project AFS file servers.

Web site is at http://www.openafs.org/ for docs, downloads, etc.  FWIW,
AFS server/services and client bits are included in Debian.  Just an
apt-get away.  Comes with an install typescript session in the docs that
walks through setting up a complete new AFS cell.

I've also been using CODA for a while now on my (linux) laptop for
"disconnected" operation and it works pretty well too, is quite a bit
simpler to setup than a full-blown AFS cell, but no client drivers for
Windows or OS X.  CODA "forked" from AFS version 2 specifically to
support disconnected read/write use.

Regards,
Mike

DJ Eshelman wrote:
> I think I may have posed this question before but I'm still having 
> trouble believing Microsoft has the only solution.
> 
> Here's the situation:

[deleted for brevity]

-- 
Michael Milligan                                   -> milli at acmeps.com