Problems with Version 1
Discover the critical scalability challenges faced by the first version of the Andrew File System. Learn how path-traversal overhead and excessive authorization checks burdened servers. Understand the impact of these issues on performance and scalability and how methodical measurement helped redesign the protocol for efficiency and improved system balance.
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Key Problems
A few key problems with this first version of AFS motivated the designers to rethink their file system. To study the problems in detail, the designers of AFS spent a great deal of time measuring their existing prototype to find what was wrong. Such experimentation is a good thing because measurement is the key to understanding how systems work and how to improve them; obtaining concrete, good data is thus a necessary part of systems construction. In their study, the authors found two main problems with AFSv1:
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Path-traversal costs are too high: When performing a Fetchor Store protocol request, the client passes the entire pathname (e.g.,
/home/remzi/notes.txt) to the server. The server, in order to access the file, must perform ...