Patent ID: 7480677

Claim:
A system in communication with clients and storage pools over a network, comprising: a computer readable storage medium; zone information, implemented in the computer readable medium, on at least one zone, wherein each zone associates at least one client, at least one fileset of a plurality of filesets in a namespace, and at least one storage pool, wherein for each zone, the associated at least one fileset and at least one storage pool are accessible to the at least one client associated in the zone; a program executed to perform operations, the operations comprising: receiving a request from one of the clients for filesets accessible to the client in the namespace; determining from the zone information at least one zone associating the requesting client with the at least one fileset and the at least one storage pool; providing the requesting client with the zone information on the at least one fileset indicated in the determined at least one zone associating the client; receiving one rule identifying a condition and storage pools in which to store files if the condition is satisfied; determining whether the storage pools identified in the received one rule are included in multiple zones; and rejecting the received one rule in response to determining that a specified fileset in the condition is not included in the at least one zone including the storage pools identified in the received rule.