AFS Version 1

This lesson discusses the working of version 1 of AFS.

We'll cover the following

We will discuss two versions of AFS1-“Scale and Performance in a Distributed File System” by John H. Howard, Michael L. Kazar, Sherri G. Menees, David A. Nichols, M. Satyanarayanan, Robert N. Sidebotham, Michael J. West. ACM Transactions on Computing Systems (ACM TOCS), Volume 6:1, February 1988. The long journal version of the famous AFS system, still in use in a number of places throughout the world, and also probably the earliest clear thinking on how to build distributed file systems. A wonderful combination of the science of measurement and principled engineering. 2-“The ITC Distributed File System: Principles and Design” by M. Satyanarayanan, J.H. Howard, D.A. Nichols, R.N. Sidebotham, A. Spector, M.J. West. SOSP ’85, Orcas Island, Washington, December 1985. The older paper about a distributed file system. Much of the basic design of AFS is in place in this older system but not the improvements for scale. The name change to “Andrew” is an homage to two people both named Andrew, Andrew Carnegie and Andrew Mellon. These two rich dudes started the Carnegie Institute of Technology and the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research, respectively, which eventually merged to become what is now known as Carnegie Mellon University.. The first version (which we will call AFSv1, but actually the original system was called the ITC distributed file system“The ITC Distributed File System: Principles and Design” by M. Satyanarayanan, J.H. Howard, D.A. Nichols, R.N. Sidebotham, A. Spector, M.J. West. SOSP ’85, Orcas Island, Washington, December 1985. The older paper about a distributed file system. Much of the basic design of AFS is in place in this older system, but not the improvements for scale. The name change to “Andrew” is an homage to two people both named Andrew, Andrew Carnegie and Andrew Mellon. These two rich dudes started the Carnegie Institute of Technology and the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research, respectively, which eventually merged to become what is now known as Carnegie Mellon University.) had some of the basic design in place, but didn’t scale as desired, which led to a re-design and the final protocol (which we will call AFSv2, or just AFS)“Scale and Performance in a Distributed File System” by John H. Howard, Michael L. Kazar, Sherri G. Menees, David A. Nichols, M. Satyanarayanan, Robert N. Sidebotham, Michael J. West. ACM Transactions on Computing Systems (ACM TOCS), Volume 6:1, February 1988. The long journal version of the famous AFS system, still in use in a number of places throughout the world, and also probably the earliest clear thinking on how to build distributed file systems. A wonderful combination of the science of measurement and principled engineering.. We now discuss the first version.

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