Virtual file system

Abstract

A virtual file system and method. The system architecture enables a plurality of underlying file systems running on various file servers to be “virtualized” into one or more “virtual volumes” that appear as a local file system to clients that access the virtual volumes. The system also enables the storage spaces of the underlying file systems to be aggregated into a single virtual storage space, which can be dynamically scaled by adding or removing file servers without taking any of the file systems offline and in a manner transparent to the clients. This functionality is enabled through a software “virtualization” filter on the client that intercepts file system requests and a virtual file system driver on each file server. The system also provides for load balancing file accesses by distributing files across the various file servers in the system, through migration of data files between servers.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0001] 1. Field of the Invention [0002] The present invention generally relates to network file systems and schemes, and more particularly, to a network file system that appears to its clients to be a single file system, while locating its files an directories on multiple server computers. [0003] 2. Background Information [0004] File system growth management is a large and growing problem for the data centers of eBusinesses and corporate intranets. Depending on the source, data storage is estimated to be growing between 60% and 200% per year and accelerating. According to the Strategic Research Corp., the two major storage-related problems in the data center are managing disk space and running out of disk space. Information Technology (IT) administrators are also struggling with placing their key, most important data onto the best storage resource in their environment. With the explosion in growth, IT users are looking for alternative solutions that simpl...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

File system growth management is a large and growing problem for the data centers of eBusinesses and corporate intranets.

According to the Strategic Research Corp., the two major storage-related problems in the data center are managing disk space and running out of disk space.

Information Technology (IT) administrators are also struggling with placing their key, most important data onto the best storage resource in their environment.

The most complex issue involving the growth of storage is the inability to manage storage environments efficiently and with qualified IT professionals. eBusinesses today are facing an influx of new storage technologies (e.g., network-attached storage (NAS) and storage area network (SAN)), which increase their storage capacity, speed, and availability, but in ways have made storage architectures more complex.

In fact the cost of managing high-performance storage environments is estimated to be far greater than the cost of purchase—by three to ten times. The required ongoing investments in both hardware / software and people into these storage architectures will continue to rise.

At the high end, customers can opt for SAN solutions, which are extremely expensive to purchase and maintain, and require a commitment to proprietary hardware.

SAN architectures do allow for considerable scalability, flexibility and performance, but at a very high cost.

However, each NAS device or GPFS sitting on a LAN has limited throughput.

IT departments have to statically partition their storage among these islands, which has a number of unpalatable consequences.

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