Network file systems and Linux

“Summary: Network File System (NFS) has been around since 1984,
but it continues to evolve and provide the basis for distributed
file systems. Today, NFS (through the pNFS extension) provides
scalable access to files distributed across a network. Explore the
ideas behind distributed file systems and in particular, recent
advances in NFS.

“A network file system is a network abstraction over a file
system that allows a remote client to access it over a network in a
similar way to a local file system. Although not the first such
system, NFS has grown and evolved into the most powerful and widely
used network file system in UNIX®. NFS permits sharing of a
common file system among a multitude of users and provides the
benefit of centralizing data to minimize needed storage.

“This article begins with a short history of NFS, its origins,
and how it has evolved. It then explores the NFS architecture and
where NFS is going.”

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