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System Admin Information

To increase security and reduce risk, Stanford is sunsetting its WebAFS service that is used to upload and download files to AFS.

To optimize AFS and make sure it is serving its intended functions, UIT has also taken these actions:

  • UIT no longer automatically provisions new faculty and staff members with AFS user volumes. New faculty or staff who need a personal user volume must submit a Help request.
    • This change does not impact existing AFS directories or the process for adding permissions for new individuals to those existing directories. Your existing space and everything in it remains intact.
    • This change does not impact the auto-provisioning of new AFS user volumes for students and postdocs.

​Class volumes do not expire and are kept indefinitely. This is an official academic policy, and any change to this policy must be considered by the Faculty Senate.

AFS is a distributed file system that enables co-operating hosts (clients and servers) to efficiently share file system resources across both local and wide area networks. AFS is provided and supported by The OpenAFS Community.

At Stanford, University IT uses AFS to provide and maintain a campus-wide distributed file system -- the ir.stanford.edu AFS cell. This cell currently consists of fifteen AFS servers, geographically distributed across campus, and 3 terabytes of usable disk space, which is backed up nightly.

Stanford uses this AFS cell to provide home directories for SUNet ID Accounts, many Stanford classes, student and research groups, many Stanford University departments and campus organizations.

Over a thousand machines on the Stanford campus run AFS client software, giving people local access to their SUNet ID Account home directories, all the software available in /usr/pubsw, and hundreds of other AFS cells worldwide.

For more information, see the Intro to AFS, more installation guide for administrators, and statistics about our AFS cell. 

Last modified April 12, 2023