[2767] in Release_7.7_team
IBM AFS action plan. One-month follow-up
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Cattey)
Wed May 30 17:59:18 2001
Message-ID: <8v5Komdz0001ABmw42@mit.edu>
Date: Wed, 30 May 2001 21:59:14 +0000 ()
From: Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
To: jdb@MIT.EDU, pbh@MIT.EDU, vkumar@MIT.EDU, longpd@MIT.EDU,
afs-contacts@MIT.EDU
CC: ramfosr@us.ibm.com, gerchak@us.ibm.com, release-team@MIT.EDU,
alexp@MIT.EDU, rferrara@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <YuuSFsFz0001IkUUxi@mit.edu>
On 27 April I sent out a proposed plan of action for dealihg with IBM AFS.
This note is a status follow-up one month later.
Review of plan:
1. Purchase support from IBM
2. Do not pursue an IBM Subscription agreement
3. Actively pursue the offer of Gary Gerchak to continue to have a
source code license for AFS.
4. Stick with IBM AFS 3.6 patches 1 on the Windows 2000 side.
5. Go to Open AFS on the Linux side.
6. Monitor the situation to decide which AFS to run on Servers, Solaris
clients, and SGI clients.
7. Recognize in our other projects that IBM is not as responsive and
collaborative a vendor as we would hope.
Subsequent events:
IBM released AFS 3.6 patches 2 with Linux 2.4 support, withdrew it
after finding a show-stopper bug, and then re-released it.
Pismere went live with IBM AFS 3.6 patches 1.
Athena Linux went to Beta with Open AFS with no reported problems.
(I'm using it every day myself since 23 May.)
IBM asked us to be patient as we await pricing, terms and
conditions, and continued renewal of our IBM Support Agreement.
No new issues have opened for AFS on SGI.
Garry Zacheiss isolated a core-dump bug in the AFS server, and
produced a test patch.
Proposed Revised AFS Action Plan:
1. If IBM produces acceptable pricing, terms, and conditions on support
renewal with source code, while IBM AFS still in use at MIT, buy it.
2. Continue with plan to go live with Open AFS on Linux.
3. Leave SGI frozen with current releases of IRIX and IBM AFS until our
SGI platform support ends in 2003.
4. Evaluate Solaris OpenAFS migration next year. CMU apparently is
converting to Open AFS over the summer. That will tell us costs, risks,
and benefits of doing so ourselves next year. Make proposals to change
then.
5. Continue to operate Pismere with AFS 3.6 patches 1 this year.
6. When workload permits, assess cost and timeframe for the expensive
migration of Windows 2000 to Open AFS. Continue to hope for help from
IBM, but proceed with assumption that abandoning IBM for Open AFS is the
correct long term (12-24 month) strategy.
The new plan continues to leave the door open for working with IBM, but
recognizes the realities of our costs, our customer needs and pace, and
the alignment of Open AFS with our needs.
-wdc
