> What does NOT scale, is the intermediate server technology, like the
> NFS-to-AFS translator. No good technology for load balancing is
> incorporated there. The semantic differences of AFS and NFS filesystems
> cause havoc. And, as you pointed out, the cache managers could be
> browsed.
i imagine the load balancing tricks nfs systems use would be equally effective
for afs-to-nfs intermediate servers. and i don't see what havoc reigns dues to
semantic differences. to me, the afs-to-nfs intermediate server looks like
nfs.
> For intermediate servers to scale, they must balance load, be robust
> across crashes so that required state information can be recovered, and
> they must be secure. I am reasonably sure that the AFS-to-NFS server
> meets none of these criteria at the present time. Now I am coming to
> understand that PC Venus does not either. Does anyone know of
> intermediate servers with AFS on one side, and PC's and Macs on the
> other that DO?
the umich macintosh intermediate scales as well as ordinary afp servers, offers
the same failure semantics to clients as ordinary afp servers, and is
reasonably (but not perfectly) secure, at least as secure as ordinary afp
servers (as far as i can tell).
now in my opinion, no nfs or afp server meets your scale or load balancing
requirements, and appleshare has pretty dismal failure handling. but in
comparison to these (unfortunate, but real world) standards, intermediate
servers don't look too bad.
peter
