How it works - Read/Write

Each volume can be replicated as many times as desired. All of the replications are read only, while the original copy is read/write.

If a ro replica is available, AFS will prefer it over the rw copy. If no ro is available, it makes the rw one the default.

Convention is to put the ro tree at /afs/cellname and the rw tree at /afs/.cellname. Once you cd into the rw side, you tend to stay there.