>>>>> "Randall" == Randall S Winchester <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Randall> client does not do any more or less caching then if it was
Randall> attaching to a windows for workgroups fileserver. Any
Randall> cacheing (since it shows local and NFS files also, not just
Randall> AFS and DFS) is done on the Unix fileserver which acts as a
Randall> translator.
I find samba a big win for PC networks with AFS. PCs crash a lot for
reasons of their own, so having an ultra-available filesystem at the
client level does not buy you all that much. Concentrating the AFS
cache at the workgroup level (share a sparc or rs6k box among 10-50
users as their sambified afs gateway) makes good economic sense; you
share the disk space for the cache among users with largely
overlapping cache needs, and (more importantly) you get intermediate
cacheing instead of end-node-only caching; a big win for people on a
WAN.
Randall> Samba does not have the advantge of local client cacheing,
Randall> but because it only needs to be installed on the server, it
Randall> is alot eaiser to maintain. Also the PC users do not need
Again, not necessarily an advantage, depending on what problem you are
trying to solve. If you have a lot of small offices at the end of
narrow pipes, you win big only bringing new software across once.
I really wish that SMB could do client-side failover to an alternate,
since I think PCs will eventually (soon?) stop crashing as often as
they do now.
-Rens
