Hello,
our project[1] continues and we aim to build 1 (one!) AFS-Cell for all schools in our town. That means 40-50k users, ~15 TB Filespace and 150-200 Servers. And the last number is the problem. The server-machines will be distributed across the town in app. 100 schools. There will be a central server-farm for management and primary file- and db-servers.
We expect that our VPN will be stable but not absolutely free of downtime. So we need some limited "offline" capability.
We will not have abundand bandwith, so we think, that there need to be AFS-Fileservers in every school, serving the user-volumes of the pupils of that school.
We also think, that it would be wise to have the RO-Clones of the filesystem-skeleton (root.afs, root.cell, users, ...) in every school.
I looked at the source and found out: Only 13 RO-clones per volume. This is by far not enough. Can I change this number to - lets say - 200? Do the algorithms scale that far? What about the size of the data-structures? Will I get trouble with RX-Protocol because of too large packets? I read that there are static arrays using this limit. Is it possible to change that to a dynamically allocated array?
We plan to install a read-only AFS-DB-Server in every school too (makes at least 100). Will Ubik scale to this number of Servers?
Klog seems to select its kaservers randomly from the CellServDB - what about afsd? Is there a "use next"-Server heurestics. What about school-dependend CellServDB-Files, containing just the "local"-RO-DB-Servers and the "master"-RW-Servers?
We would be happy to use AFS. To be honest - I do not know any FS that would be more useable either.
We have some capacity developing patches for OpenAFS, but we need some hints regarding compatibility and stability.
Thank you for your help, Regards
Chris [1] Look at http://www.openafs.org/success.html -- Chris Huebsch www.hübsch-gemacht.de | TU Chemmnitz, Informatik, RNVS GPG-Encrypted mail welcome! ID:7F2B4DBA | Str. d. Nationen 62, B204 Chemnitzer Linux-Tage 2005, 5.-6.März | D-09107 Chemnitz http://chemnitzer.linux-tage.de/ | +49 371 531-1377, Fax -1803
