On 11/24/08 10:07 PM, "O'Brien, Dennis L" <Dennis.L.O'[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> As to the alleged difficulties of configuring SFS, I don't see it. I > opened the book, read it, and configured SFS. It wasn't hard. If you > don't understand VM at all, then everything is hard. If you do > understand VM, I don't see SFS as being particularly difficult. I guess I get to see the cleanup after a lot of failed tests, so I see a bit different attitude. I personally don't have a problem with SFS; been there, got the t-shirt. I do have a big problem with it's usability factors. The folks that have problems with it are the real new folks who are already struggling with the mapping of minidisk to Linux filesystem, and don't have any real understanding of why SFS is useful; to them, it's just one more cryptic thing to implement that doesn't have anything to do with Linux or OpenSolaris, and doesn't help either of those two environments in any obvious way. Neither can use it, neither can access data stored in it without going through NFS (at which point, you might as well do another Linux guest, as SFS has no significant advantage as a backing store if you use NFS semantics for data) and you can use the CMS NFS client to get at NFS-based storage. Given that, using a single methodology for disk management (minidisks) is often simpler and more reliable for newbies to understand, because it's the same for CMS and for guests. As Richard pointed out, SFS is also not exactly easy to manage. Command syntax is inconsistent with the rest of CMS, and certainly doesn't look much like anything a new user might ever have encountered before. Backups are arcane, and even installing an additional backup product isn't straightforward (look at the install instructions/program directory for IBM Backup Manager if you don't believe me) for experienced CMS users. Don't get me started on GRANT AUTH, though. I don't disagree you can do neat things with SFS. I question whether the usability factors need to be addressed before you go into it as a default solution for new services. -- db
