Patent ID: 7958200

Claim:
A method for providing remote client access to an exported file system in a distributed computing environment, the method comprising: in response to a request from a remote client for file system access, determining whether the request relates to a locally exported file system exported by a local caching file server or a remotely exported file system exported by a remote caching file server; if the request relates to the locally exported file system, invoking a local token manager at the local caching file server to obtain a token granting access permission to the locally exported file system; or if the request relates to the remotely exported file system, passing the request from the local token manager to a remote token manager of the local caching file server and invoking the remote token manager to communicate with a local access routine in the remote caching file server, through a remote access routine in the local caching file server, to obtain a token granting access permission for the remotely exported file system exported by the remote caching file server. wherein the remote token manager only communicates with the local access routine in the remote caching file server using the remote access routine in the local caching file server.