Network File System
SAN Recovery - Network File System
Network File System (NFS) is a client/server application that allows NFS servers to give access to their local file system to NFS clients over a network using TCP/IP. NFS allows a user on a client computer to access files over a network as if the network devices are attached to its local disks.
Originally developed by Sun Microsystems, NFS has been designated as a file server standard. NFS protocol is based on Open Network Computing Remote Procedure Call (ONC RPC) method of communication between computers. NFS client can be installed on different operating systems using products such as Sun’s Solstice Network Client.
In NFS, the user or the administrator assigns a part or whole of a file system to be designated as accessible. This portion of the file system can be accessed with the privileges given to each file.
Different versions of NFS are available. WebNFS, an extension to Version 2 and Version 3 of NFS, integrates more easily into Web browsers and enables operations through firewalls. WebNFS is now part of Netscape’s Communicator browser.
The current version, NFSv4.1, includes parallel NFS (pNFS) capability enabling data access parallelism. The NFSv4.1 pNFS server consists of a collection of server resources or components, controlled by the meta-data server. NFSv4.1 differs from the traditional NFS server in that it acts beyond simple name/data separation by striping the data among a set of data servers.
NFSv4.1 also provides Sessions, Directory Delegation and Notifications, Multi-server Namespace, ACL/SACL/DACL, Retention Attributions, and SECINFO_NO_NAME.
