DAFS takes advantage of both of these capabilities to enable clusters of application servers in heterogeneous environments to efficiently share data, enhancing the performance and scalability of Internet, collaborative, e-commerce, and database applications. DAFS will be used as the basis for integrating the industry's best application software, compute servers, and storage systems into cohesive, massively scalable storage networks. The DAFS Collaborative was formed in June 2000 by Network Appliance, Intel, and other leading systems and storage networking vendors, with the goal of making the Direct Access File System protocol available to the industry. The group is soliciting industry review and feedback before submitting the new file system to an appropriate standards body. The DAFS Collaborative encourages broad industry participation.
Additional participants are welcome and can join online.