Client-Side Failover in NFS Version 4

In NFS version 4, if a replica cannot be established because the file sizes are different or the file types are not the same, then the following happens.

• The file is marked dead.

• A warning is printed.

• The application receives a system call failure.

If you restart the application and try again to access the file, you should be successful.

In NFS version 4, you no longer receive replication errors for directories of different sizes. In prior versions of NFS, this condition was treated as an error and would impede the remapping process.

Furthermore, in NFS version 4, if a directory read operation is unsuccessful, the operation is performed by the next listed server. In previous versions of NFS, unsuccessful read operations would cause the remap to fail and the process to hang until the original server was available.