[Macpartners] Filesystem virtualization for AFP

[Douglas Alan]

Does anyone know if there is a filesystem virtualization solution for
Apple's AFP filesharing protocol?

By "filesystem virtualization", I mean the ability to present multiple
filesystems spread across multiple servers as one large fileshare.  The
AFS filesystem, I believe, introduced the notion, but Micro$oft supports
the idea with their DFS filesystem, which is, I believe, layered on top
of CIFS.  For NFS, there are filesystem virtualization appliances that
one can purchase, and one can also implement filesystem virtualization
for NFS on the cheap via clever use of the automounter and symbolic
links.

Whither virtualization with AFP?

|>oug

P.S. Spanning one huge filesystem across RAIDs using XSAN or another
SAN-based technology does not sound particularly appealing to me as an
alternative.  (Unless perhaps such SAN volumes, along with their
filesystem, can be easily resized.)  I don't actually want one huge
filesystem, as that approach is pretty terrible for disaster recovery,
fsck-like processes, and the like.  Filesystem virtualization, instead,
presents many filesystems as one large virtual filesystem, but
underneath the covers there are still many separate filesystems.