[Fed-Talk] Re: AFS with MacOS X
[Fed-Talk] Re: AFS with MacOS X
- Subject: [Fed-Talk] Re: AFS with MacOS X
- From: Ran Atkinson <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 31 Dec 2004 13:47:29 -0500
On 30 Dec 2004, at 15:03, Alan B Stepakoff (NASA/JPL) wrote:
Egon,
We are users of AFS and utilize OpenAFS on OS X for access. Works
great.
I have not seen anything about AFS being incorporated into Tiger nor
is it on the list of items to test.
If you hear any more on this topic I would be very interested.
Alan Stepakoff
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
FACT: Apple has been asking some users about whether they would be
interested in seeing the CMU Coda filesystem added into MacOS X,
along with the ways in which Coda might be used and deployed and
the user-perceived reasons that Coda is a particularly interesting
approach.
FACT: Coda has been ported to the Linux kernel already and is present
in some Linux distributions.
FACT: Coda is a descendant of the original Andrew File System. Coda has
specific enhancements making it particularly well suited for
intermittent
connectivity between a Coda client and the Coda file server and for
occasionally diconnected operation. More information on Coda is
available at some CMU web site (use Google to find the URLs).
OPINION: Coda is a particularly useful file system technology for the
deployed
military. It works well with mobile nodes that are not always
well connected to the IP network. It also should work well over
low-quality
(e.g. RF) network links. If marketed correctly and clearly, this
feature
could be a significant differentiator from other personal computing
systems. As it happens, CIFS/SMB file services are remarkably poor
performers over high-delay (e.g. RF, satellite), low-quality, or
low-bandwidth links. People who are in a position to know tell me that
this is a current operational problem in southwest Asia, for example.
Co-incidentally, for the same underlying technical reasons, Coda
support would be pretty interesting to any organisation with lots of
laptops, mobile users, and significant wireless coverage (e.g. 802.11).
OPINION: AFS support would significantly help Apple sell MacOS X into
the
higher-education and high-performance computing market segments. These
are areas where MacOS X is already starting to gain some traction.
Adding
native support for AFS would help increase the traction for Apple in
those market segments. Because AFS has negligible deployment outside
of higher-education and high-performance computing, AFS would not be
a big help in other market segments.
SPECULATION: Apple might be incorporating Coda into some future version
of
MacOS X. Coda's features are arguably a super-set of the AFS features,
so this is roughly consistent with the limited public information about
MacOS X future plans. They could be implementing AFS instead-of or
in-addition-to Coda.
DISCLAIMER: Speaking for myself only, not any other party.
Cheers,
Ran Atkinson
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