In order to improve its stability and availability, RCAC will be phasing
out NFS access to the DXUL archival storage system running on
fortress.rcac.purdue.edu over the next 12 months. You have received this
letter because our records indicate some of the systems you manage NFS
mount this archive. Please take a moment to review the information below,
and feel free to forward this note to other system managers you think
should know about it. As always, please contact rcac-help@purdue.edu if
you have questions or comments.

• NFS access has been a contributing factor in several unplanned DXUL
  outages recently, and maintaining an exports list across the entire
  campus causes system management problems and is not recommended by
  the DXUL vendor. Additionally, NFS access encourages certain types
  of user behavior that are incompatible with the archival nature of
  the system and can cause several serious performance and stability
  issues.

   

• NFS access to DXUL/fortress will be phased out in a tiered
  approach. RCAC will be discontinuing this access on its systems by
  December 31, 2008. Access will be phased out across campus by July
  1, 2009. By discontinuing access on its systems first, RCAC hopes
  to find and solve any problems you may encounter when this access
  is discontinued on your systems later.

   

• While not strictly necessary, we encourage you to remove the DXUL
  shares from your fstab or automount maps prior to July 1, 2009. On
  that date, we will stop exporting this share and any remaining
  client mount entries will no longer work.

   

• Access to DXUL will remain available from your machines, just not
  via the NFS protocol. All other protocols used for accessing DXUL
  (e.g. scp and sftp) will continue to be available.

   

• RCAC will develop and distribute tools as needed to ease the
  transition from NFS access to other protocols while maintaining
  both ease of use from automated or non-interactive jobs and optimal
  functionality and performance. Please send comments or suggestions
  about tools that might be needed to rcac-help@purdue.edu.