One reason that is often given for having NFS is to easily keep software in sync on many machines at once. However, that argument was more valid before the days of high-speed local networks and cheap disks. You might be better served by equipping each workstation in your enterprise with a 20 GB or 40 GB disk, with a complete copy of all of your applications residing on each machine. You can use a facility such as rdist or rsync over SSH to make necessary updates. Not only will this configuration give you better security, but it will also provide better fault tolerance: if the server or network goes down, each system has everything necessary to continue operation. This configuration also facilitates system customization.

A second argument for network filesystems is that they allow users to access their home accounts with greater ease, no matter which machine they use. But while this may make sense in a university’s student lab, most employees almost always use the same machine, so there is no reason to access multiple machines as if they were equivalent.

Network filesystems are sometimes used to share large databases from multiple points. But network filesystems are a poor choice for this application because locking the database and synchronizing updates is usually more difficult than sharing a single machine using remote logins. In fact, with the X Window System, opening a window on a central database machine is convenient and often as fast as (or faster than) accessing the data via a network filesystem. Alternatively, you can use a database server with client programs that are run locally.

The argument is also made that sharing filesystems over the network results in lower cost. In point of fact, such a configuration may be more expensive than the alternatives. For instance, putting high-resolution color X display terminals on each desktop and connecting them with a 100 MB switched Ethernet to a multiprocessor server equipped with RAID disk may be more cost-effective, provide better security, give better performance, and use less electricity. The result may be a system that is cheaper to buy, operate, and maintain. The only loss is the cachet of equipping each user with a top-of-the-line workstation on their desktops when all they really need is access to a keyboard, mouse, and fast display.

Ironically, the only argument for network filesystems may be security—provided that you manage your system carefully. Today, most X terminals have no support for encryption.^[225] On client-/server-based systems that use Kerberos or DCE, you can avoid sending unencrypted passwords and user data over the network. But be careful: you will only get the data confidentiality aspects of this approach if your remote filesystem encrypts all user data—most don’t.