"Shyh-Wei Luan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> On May 28, 2:56pm, James Roberts wrote:
>
>>> I believe most people on this mailing list use and like AFS. It has
>>> puzzled me a long time why AFS has not taken off on the Internet.
>>> Other inferior network file systems, such as NFS and Microsoft
>>> Dfs, are rushing to define themselves as *the* Internet file system.
>
>> Hasn't Microsoft DFS been mostly vaporware so far?
>
> As far as I know, Microsoft Dfs has been vaporware in terms of server
> manageability and scalability. But I think they are doing real work
> in the area of performance (those AndX stuff), file locking, and security.
The Micro$oft Dfs specifications in their Dfs white paper (as opposed
to what is currently available for download) defines a first attempt at a
distributed file system and really is a pale imitation of AFS and DFS
-- but then it's free, right? There is no automatic replication,
no replication whatsoever of the Dfs root, limited client caching,
timeouts used for maintaining cache consistency, no RPC security, no
encryption of data transfers, etcetera ad infinitum.
> As much as I like to see DCE/DFS succeed (I was involved in the DCE
> design/development in the early 90's), I think it would be a wrong
> weapon to be used on the Internet file service market. DCE/DFS
> might be a good candidate for intranets, where tight OS integrations
> in a more controlled environment may warrant the price of the DCE
> complexity/baggages. For Internet, AFS is a much better starting
> point, IMHO.
Transarc, with the recent change in product status for AFS, is
changing marketing strategy and initiatives for both AFS and DFS, and
ISPs are just one targeted market (witness IBM's recently announced
Nagano and WebSphere product bundles, which use AFS as the underlying
file system: Nagano is targeted for Web sites and WebSphere to
ISPs). I'm not entirely at liberty to discuss product futures, but
suffice to say we are unwilling to concede the distributed file system
world to either Sun or Micro$oft, and you will undoubtedly see more
aggressive and interesting development and marketing of both AFS and DFS.
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Tom Menner I
Technical Consultant I [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Infrastructure/File Systems I (412) 338-4414
Transarc Corporation I
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