guidelines for max volume sizes

[John W. Sopko Jr.]

I had queried Transarc on this subject in the past. They told me the
main
reason for the limitations of the volume size was to guarantee backups.
That is, creating backup volumes and doing backups to tape. You can run
backups on larger volumes but if you do and have problems with backups
they will not support this configuration.

Michael Pelletier wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 29 Jan 2001, Kelsang Wangden wrote:
> 
> > I read in the AFS 3.6 release notes that the maximum volume size for 3.5
> > (what are servers are running right now) is 2 Gig, and in 3.6 it's 8
> > Gig.  Are there any other guidelines that I should give them regarding
> > volume size?
> 
> What I heard in the class is that this is the maximum RECOMMENDED and
> SUPPORTED volume size, not the physical maximum for the software.  This
> probably came about back when 32-bit OS's couldn't handle filesystems
> larger than 2GB.  The thing to keep in mind, though, is that larger
> volumes are more unweildy to manage - if you want to move it, you have to
> find a big enough landing space for it somewhere else.  And it's easy
> enough to create a variety of volumes of reasonable size and mount them
> underneath one another, provided that you don't wind up with individual
> files larger than the volume size you choose.  For instance, we've got an
> 11GB filesystem that holds a particular software package - we can break it
> up into tools.appname.bin, tools.appname.config, and tools.appname for
> everything else to fit under an 8GB volume size.
> 
>         -Michael Pelletier.

-- 
John W. Sopko Jr.               University of North Carolina
email: sopko@cs.unc.edu         Computer Science Dept., CB 3175
Phone: 919-962-1844             Sitterson Hall; Room 135
Fax:   919-962-1799             Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3175