Bob Dew says:
> Excerpts from mail: 7-Jul-94 Re: e-mail over AFS ! [EMAIL PROTECTED] (790)
>
> > What're the advantages of putting the spool
> > into AFS if you're going to use a networked transport layer (kPOP3)
> > anyway?
>
>
> 1) Enhanced scalability and ease of management though server
> replication:
With proper management tools it is actually easier to handle this with
pop servers. Besides, in AFS, you can't really replicate the
read-write volumes, and thats what mail partitions are.
> 2) Automated nightly backup.
I've got automatic nightly backup already, thank you.
> 3) Provision for natural migration to or integration with IMAP. POP
> servers can concurrently run an IMAP service. Since IMAP keeps mail on
> the server (often in /usr/spool/mail) instead of downloading it to the
> client, users's mail can be backed up, kerberos-protected and accessible
> from any participating server if stored in AFS or DFS.
If you are in a large scale distributed environment, you have a lot
more to back up than just people's mail -- all their work is
important. Once the mail is in their own directory the problem of
backing up mail reduces to the problem of backing all their files up.
> > We use hesiod to resolve the particular pop server for the
> > user
>
> Hesiod's an elegant solution for certain academic sites, but the overall
> system of POP/IMAP used in concert with AFS/DFS would be much more
> useful (and palatable) for general consumption if similar functionality
> could be accomplished using standards-based, off-the-shelf software.
I completely disagree. Having worked for a long period in a group that
did nothing but worry about systems management problems for a
worldwide network of several thousand machines, I'll assure you that
MIT's solutions to most of these problems are dismissed as "academic"
only by those who haven't looked closely enough.
I really think that putting mail spools in AFS space is silly. KPop
solves all the problems far better, and as I've noted, with a proper
systems management infrastructure based on a real relational database
(MIT Moira, the moira we built at Lehman brothers, ESM's Mesa, and
others are good examples) its trivial to manage.
Perry
