AFS is a distributed filesystem that enables co-operating hosts (clients and servers) to efficiently share filesystem resources across both local area and wide area networks. AFS (the Andrew File System) is based on a distributed file system originally developed at Carnegie-Mellon University.

AFS has been in use in a few campus departments since 1992 for operating system and applications management. It has been used since 1997 by Information and Educational Technology for the Banner and Dafis projects. Beginning Winter 2000, AFS has been under evaluation as a method to provide disk space to the campus community that is secure and accessible from commonly-used operating systems.