Ask HN: Alternatives to OpenAFS?

3 pointsbaileyb3 comments

A project I'm working on needs a secure network file share to synchronize files between our local machines and our remote servers in real-time. Right now we're using OpenAFS, but I feel like there has to be a better option. Any recommendations? Anyone have any experience with GlusterFS?

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Does OpenAFS not solve your problem in some way? A little more context would be helpful.

Sure, the question was a little vague. Right now, we are mounting an OpenAFS volume and using an editor on our local machine (Sublime for example) to code. After we're done editing, the code is run on the server, which also mounts the same OpenAFS volume.

The main reason we chose OpenAFS was the security model. However, from what I've read it seems to be based on Kerberos 4, which is out-of-date and has problems. It's also difficult to maintain a OpenAFS cell and requires a separate Kerberos authentication server.

I'm basically looking for a more modern DFS that implements better user-based security.

If your use case simply involves editing text files so that they are in sync with the remote server then OpenAFS does seem to be overkill. SSHFS [1] would be the simplest solution to this. It works well for small files but not well with large ones due to its synchronous nature.

[1] http://fuse.sourceforge.net/sshfs.html

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