[Condor-users] afs vs nfs vs separate file systems

[Michael Thon <mthon@xxxxxxxx>]

Greetings - we have had a log of success in setting up a small condor pool of 
4 linux boxes (workstations) in our lab.  Now we are planning to add more 
systems to the pool and to start actually using it for research and we need 
to make some decisions about how to configure the pool.  Specifically, I need 
to decide if we will us a shared file system.  Some of the programs we run 
have large input files and output files. (sometimes > 500 MB These are blast 
databases for any of you biologists out there)   currently all files are 
being transferred by condor.  From a nework performance point of view, would 
it be better to put these files on a shared file system?  Another option is 
to mirror the blast databases on all of the machines, but this could take a 
lot of disk space on the nodes and can cause problems if the syncronization 
gets out of wack.  
If I use a shared file system should I use afs or nfs?  I have used nfs a 
little bit and I have no experience with afs.  I want to keep our config as 
simple as possible, even if I have to sacrifice a little performance of the 
pool.
thanks for your comments
Mike