Patent ID: 7124171

Claim:
In a networked computing cluster including a storage system and a plurality of servers in communication with the storage system, a method for sharing files in an area of data of the storage system, comprising: providing a floating Internet Protocol (IP) network address that can be associated with any one of the plurality of servers, each server already having a respective individual network address different from the floating IP network address; associating the floating IP network address with a first server of the plurality of servers; making the area of data available by the first server to be accessed by the other servers of the plurality of servers upon reference by the other servers of the plurality of servers to the floating IP network address; in the event that the first server becomes unavailable, (1) transferring the floating IP network address from the first server to a second server of the plurality of servers so that the first server is no longer associated with the floating IP network address and the second server is associated with the floating IP network address, and (2) making the area of data available by the second server to be accessed by the other servers of the plurality of servers upon reference by the other servers to the floating IP network address, wherein the area of data includes a file system stored on a storage area of the storage system, and wherein: (i) making the area of data available by the first server comprises executing, by the first server, a file system sharing routine including: (a) attaching to the storage area of the storage system to obtain direct access to the storage area; (b) locally mounting the file system stored on the storage area; and (c) issuing an export command to cause the file system to be shared among the plurality of servers, the export command including the floating IP network address as the network address to be referred to by the servers when accessing the file system; and (ii) transferring the floating IP network address comprises executing, by the second server, a failover routine including the above steps (a)–(c) of the file system sharing routine.