In the "olden days" large corporations used central file servers and diskless workstations for 2 reasons, 1. cost 2. software configuration management.
Hence NFS and central licensing servers like the FlexLM LM License Server which allowed large customers like HP to upgrade thousands of instances of CAD tools easily. This is still the case for large, expensive software packages. The best implementation was Mentor Graphics' Aegis (BSD) operating system with Domain (token ring) Networking. Totally proprietary but worked very well. Commodity PCs (with the emphasis on personal) and Windows broke that paradigm and MS will sell blanket licenses, eliminating the need for central licensing - and/or central file servers. Things Windows doesn't support well. Currently AFS fits in nicely as a data storage and backup system and also as a software package install server. It essentially replaces NFS for Unix/Linux apps. The AFS ability to separate data (R/W) from executables (RO) in separate volumes is much better than the virus prone MS architecture. I.e. one can trust an RO volume. There's a strong possibility that Linux desktop apps may gain market share because of Vista's cost and technologies like NX allow thin workstations to perform acceptably over the net. AFS fits in nicely. The rumored virtualization in Vista could increase the use of AFS since MS will have to tackle the use of multiple instances of a licensed package on the same machine. I assume this will use .NET assemblies in the Global Assembly Cache which is file, not registry, based. Theoretically the GAC could reside on a central server. Token lifetimes might be a problem. My viewpoint is that a BIOS with a "boot from AFS" capability would be just great. Tedc _______________________________________________ OpenAFS-info mailing list OpenAFS-info@openafs.org https://lists.openafs.org/mailman/listinfo/openafs-info