Cluster File System Features

The cluster file system has the following features:

• File access locations are transparent. A process can open a file located anywhere in the system and processes on all nodes can use the same path name to locate a file.

• Coherency protocols are used to preserve the UNIX file access semantics even if the file is accessed concurrently from multiple nodes.

• Extensive caching is used along with zero-copy bulk I/O movement to move file data efficiently.

• The cluster file system provides highly available advisory file locking functionality using the fcntl(2) interfaces. Applications running on multiple cluster nodes can synchronize access to data using advisory file locking on a cluster file system file. File locks are recovered immediately from nodes that leave the cluster, and from applications that fail while holding locks.

• Continuous access to data is ensured, even when failures occur. Applications are not affected by failures as long as a path to disks is still operational. This guarantee is maintained for raw disk access and all file system operations.

• Cluster file systems are independent from the underlying file system and volume management software. Cluster file systems make any supported on-disk file system global.