Patent ID: 8417788

Claim:
A method comprising: assigning logical identifiers to at least two groups of clients; assigning, to each of at least two of multiple file systems resident in a single file server, the same logical identifiers assigned to the two groups of clients, access to a given file system being restricted to client data processors that are members of specified groups, each file system being assigned a different logical identifier than the other file systems resident in the single file server, so that each group of clients is associated with a respective one of the file systems; originating a file system request message at one of the clients; tagging the file system request with the logical identifier of the group to which the client belongs; routing the file system request message through a data network, including at least one step of examining the logical identifier in connection with making a message routing decision so that the message is only routed to a file server having the file system associated with the logical identifier; receiving the file system request at the file server; within a designated protocol layer at the file server higher than a data link layer, passing the logical identifier information to the next higher layer; and at a selected protocol layer which is responsible for passing messages to the file systems in the single file server, examining the logical identifier information to select a file system as a selected file system to which the message is to be routed, the selected file system effectively an addressable element of the data network thereby requiring only a single physical network connection, so that only messages intended for the selected file system associated with the logical identifier are routed to the selected file system, and other messages with different logical identifiers are not routed to that selected file system; wherein a communication protocol in use is Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), the selected protocol layer is the transport layer, and the logical identifier is passed up to the transport layer with a data payload provided by a network layer.