[HCoop-Misc] AFS on Linux

[Alok G. Singh]

On 23 Jan 2007, cclausen at hcoop.net wrote:

> Yes, it is possible.  I'm not sure how AFS would work with Rocks
> though.  It shouldn't be a problem as long as each machine has its
> own /etc space for the AFS config files (some of them need to be
> different on each machine.)

Yes. The /etc space is distinct for each box.

> Note that a compromise of any one machine would comprimise ALL of
> them though (which may already be the case.)

It is indeed the case.

> AFS servers generally want dedicated partitions for the server to
> store data.  Also note that AFS does not export local files systems
> like NFS.  You need to copy data into AFS and once copied it is only
> accessible with an AFS client.

That is fine. We only plan to use the partition for backup while we
buy some tapes.

> You might be better off using some block-level export scheme, like
> iSCSI or nbd to share the space to a few machines that would act as
> servers.  Of course, this isn't an efficient use of network I/O as
> data would travel in and out of the server machine.

To save some money we bought a smaller switch and only one NIC is
being used per box. Since we run MPI code on the cluster, we would
rather have the network as free as possible. Or at least, have some
control over when the data transfer occurs.

> If you can be more specific as to how you'd want to actually use the
> disk space, I might be able to make a better suggestion.

The intent is to combine all the small disks that are distributed
across 16 machines into one large partition where about 1 TB of data
can be stored. This data is not required on a day-to-day basis. In
that sense it is just like a tape drive.

Since it appears that AFS does not do this aggregation, is there
something else that does ? From my research, Coda doesn't either.

-- 
Alok

Save gas, don't use the shell.