Patent ID: 6931410

Claim:
A method, in a requested file system server, for servicing a request, comprising: receiving a request for a referencing object from a client, wherein the referencing object refers to a referenced file system that has been moved to a location on a different server; using information from said referencing object to look up a location of the referenced file system in a separate data structure; returning a redirection message indicating the location of the referenced file system to the client, wherein the redirection message comprises an address of a referenced file system server containing the referenced file system and wherein the referencing object has a file system identifier; encoding the file system identifier, wherein the redirection message further comprises the encoded file system identifier and wherein the referencing object is a top level object for a uniform namespace comprising all file systems on participating file system servers; receiving a redirected request for a file system object; identifying an encoded file system identifier in the redirected request; decoding the encoded file system identifier to form a file system identifier corresponding to a requested file system; looking up a path for the requested file system in a file system identifier data structure; and retrieving the root of the requested file system using the path for the requested file system.