Part III: AFS - A Secure Distributed File System

Abstract

AFS is a secure distributed global file system providing location independence, scalability and transparent migration capabilities for data. AFS works across a multitude of Unix and non-Unix operating systems and is used at many large sites in production for many years. AFS still provides unique features that are not available with other distributed file systems even though AFS is almost 20 years old. This age might make it less appealing to some but with IBM making AFS available as open-source in 2000, new interest in use and development was sparked. When talking about AFS, people often mention other file systems as potential alternatives. Coda (http://www.coda.cs.cmu.edu/) with its disconnected mode will always be a research project and never have production quality. Intermezzo (http://www.inter-mezzo.org/) is now in the Linux kernel but not available for any other operating systems. NFSv4 (http://www.nfsv4.org/) which picked up many ideas from AFS and Coda is not mature enough yet to be used in serious production mode. This article presents the rich features of AFS and invites readers to play with it.