Patent ID: 7958199

Claim:
In a digital processing system comprising at least two NAS servers, a workload distribution method comprising: configuring the NAS servers as a single, virtual, server using a configurable switch fabric, replicating at least a subset of data on an NAS server on at least one other NAS server to create a replicated storage domain; receiving file system requests from at least one client; directing a read request from the at least one client to a server in the replicated storage domain, the server being selected in accordance with a workload distribution function that: (1) initially directs requests for a given file to a single server; (2) when the rate at which the file is being requested exceeds a threshold limit, designates an additional server to serve the file; and (3) distributes successive requests for the file in round robin fashion between the servers designated to serve the file; multicasting a write request from the at least one client to each of the individual servers included in the replicated storage domain, maintaining data synchronization across the replicated storage domain; and receiving, from at least one of the servers in the replicated storage domain, a response to the received file system request.