[Federated-fs] Federated FS, pNFS, NFSv4.1 referrals....

[Christian Bandulet - Principal Engineer]

Daniel,

I had a look at:

http://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-ellard-nfsv4-federated-fs-01.txt

I am still not sure what the difference of federated FS is compared to 
pNFS or NFSv4.1. referrals.

I guess that pNFS and NFSv4.1. referrals should also work across 
heterogeneous file server, right?

Is it correct that a NFSv4.1. client which requests a file from server A 
will get back a referral structure instead of the file itself. the 
client then in a second step has to contact the right file server whose 
name will be part of the referral structure received from server A?

In a federated FS would  server A be a kind of proxy -  i.e. the client 
will receive the requested file  from server A no matter whether it is 
really physically hosting the file? i.e. server A can get the file from 
server B and deliver it to the client?

Is federated FS e.g. about unifying several pNFS-built global namespaces 
to a single super-global namespace?

thanks for you patience,
Christian


-- 
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Christian Bandulet                                   Sun Microsystems
Principal Engineer                                   Amperestr. 6
Data Management Ambassador           D-63225 Langen
                                                                     Germany
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                                                                     Fax.: +49-6103-752-299

mailto:christian.bandulet at Sun.COM
http://www.sun.com

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