Abstract: A method and apparatus for managing a network attached storage system is presented which includes a web based user interface. The interface allows for the execution of many different commands on several different storage system attributes without loss of context between command execution. The interface is HTML based and provides dynamic construction of Javascript object lists based on a database read by a CGI program executing on an HTTP server. The interface eliminates the hierarchical structure of menu navigation associated with other interfaces.

Abstract: A file server includes stream server computers linking a cached disk array storage subsystem to a data network, and at least two controller servers for receiving requests for file access from network clients. At any given time one of the controller servers is active and another is inactive in servicing client requests. The active controller server selects one of the stream servers to service each request. A controller server failover mechanism is provided for recovering from a failure of the active controller server, and a stream server failover mechanism is provided for recovering from a failure of a stream server. The inactive controller server becomes active when it fails to receive a signal periodically transmitted by the active controller server. The active controller server begins stream server failover when it fails to receive a signal periodically transmitted by each stream server.

Abstract: For network file access, a plurality of data mover computers are linked to a cached disk array. Read-write files stored in the cached disk array are accessible to network clients through more than one of the data mover computers so that the data mover computers are not a bottleneck to file access. The cached disk array stores a network file directory including file locking information, and the data mover computers each have file system software that accesses the network file directory for shared read-write file access. The data mover computers perform the file system tasks such as managing the file directory for mapping of file names to logical blocks and for locking and unlocking of the files in order to minimize loading on the cached disk array. Therefore, the network file server need not use any particular one of the data mover computers to serve as a control point for read-write file access. Instead, file system software for managing the file directory is replicated in each data mover computer.

Abstract: A conventional network file server has a file system that permits file attributes and file data to be written in any order. The conventional network file server may also support an asynchronous write protocol, in which file attributes and file data need not be written to disk storage until a client sends a commit request. This asynchronous write protocol has a data security problem if the attributes are written before the data and the server crashes before completing the writing of the data to disk storage. This security problem is solved by adding a file system cache and following a protocol that writes the attributes to storage after writing the data to storage. For example, the attributes and data are stored in the file system cache and are not written down to storage until receipt of a commit request. When the commit request is received, the data is sent first from the file system cache to storage. Then the attributes are sent from the file system cache to storage.