ARCHIVED: At IU, what were the Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) and the Distributed File System (DFS)?

The Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) was a standards-based, comprehensive network security solution designed by a consortium of vendors, and the Distributed File System (DFS) was an application developed for use in the DCE. Prior to the upgrade of Indiana University's Massive Data Storage System (MDSS) to HPSS 6.2, DCE provided security and authentication for MDSS. DFS was one of many ways users could access the MDSS.

In 2005, IBM discontinued support for DCE/DFS. As of December 31, 2006, just prior to the upgrade of MDSS to HPSS 6.2, UITS discontinued support of DCE/DFS. The upgraded MDSS authenticates against Kerberos. Because UITS no longer supports DFS, users will need to use some other mechanism such as HPSSFS, CIFS, or a programmatic way of staging data locally.

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