We actually did try doing that with NFS.
Sun Support didn't believe us when they saw our automounter tables.
The whole thing scaled up to about 500 machines and users in equal numbers.
Beyond that, we saw all sorts of strange errors.
Chris.
Russ Allbery wrote:
> Glew, Andy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
> > The same line of reasoning applies to a number of other areas. AFS
> > solves no problems that cannot be solved other ways, using local disks,
> > NFS, etc., albeit requiring more human intervention.
>
> I want to see the exact same terabyte file system on 20,000 machines, all
> of which are actively using it at the same time.
>
> How do I do this with NFS?
>
> > Because AFS doesn't solve the whole problem in a performing manner, and
> > because the whole problem can be solved without AFS; because AFS has a
> > lot of sysadmin overhead, and because it's a hassle to split disk space
> > up into separate pools of AFS and NFS; AFS goes lower and lower on the
> > priority list until it falls off the ZBB.
>
> AFS requires considerably less sysadmin overhead than a similar quantity
> of data in NFS in my experience. Location-independence and
> user-transparent data moves means that we never have to schedule downtime
> and can upgrade to new disk arrays without clients even *noticing*. Try
> doing that with NFS.
>
> --
> Russ Allbery ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
