Questions
- 1. What is the role of a VFS (virtual file system) in NFS?
- 2. AFS is implemented as two software components that exist as user-level UNIX processes. What are these two software components and their functions?
- 3. The load of RPC calls on AFS servers is much less than NFS servers for the same client workload. Why?
- 4. How does AFS maintain cache consistency?
- 5. AFS does not have cache coherence problem in server-side caching via replicas. Why?
Class Discussions
- To address the scalability and performance of distributed file systems, the key strategy that AFS (Andrew File System) uses is caching whole file in the client side. This strategy is supported by some characteristics about the usage of file systems. Discuss those characteristics that support the whole file serving and caching in distributed file systems.
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