Requirements for an OpenAFS File Server

There are a few simple requirements to get an OpenAFS file server up and running here at NC State University. I will try to touch on each and give my thoughts on the matter.

The very first thing you need is permission. Please contact your systems administrator and ITD about this. Your server wont go anywhere without their support. You will also need to obtain from ITD the AFS key for the cell that your server will be part of. This is a highly controlled secret server key and is used for server authentication and encryption. Please treat the key as such.

So you've got the go ahead to make your server a reality. You will, of course, need the actual server. Again you should probably speak to your systems administrator and ITD about hardware suggestions. The software will run on pretty much any i386 Red Hat Linux box but good hardware is a very important starting point. You will need to think about your partitioning schema and the back end media your data will be stored on. The OpenAFS server needs at least one dedicated partition to store the volumes in. These partitions should probably be on a RAID device for redundancy and fail-over.

Finally, you will need to install your server with with NCSU Realm Kit for Red Hat Linux. Please see the Users' Guide for the NCSU Realm Kit for Red Hat Linux for detailed information about installing it.