Patent ID: 7814131

Claim:
A method of operation of a storage system comprising: reading, by the storage system, an export rule associated with an exported resource in the storage system; determining whether the export rule includes a directive that associates an advertised pathname of the exported resource with an actual pathname of the exported resource, the advertised pathname identifying a virtual export point and the actual pathname identifying a physical export point; in response to a determination that the export rule does not include the directive, using the advertised pathname of the exported resource to obtain a filehandle of the exported resource, the filehandle being a value uniquely associated with the exported resource; in response to a determination that the export rule includes the directive, determining whether the actual pathname of the export resource is the advertised pathname of another resource; in response to a determination that the export rule includes the directive and that the actual pathname of the export resource is not the advertised pathname of another resource, using the actual pathname to obtain the filehandle of the exported resource without clients of the storage system having knowledge that the exported resource is stored according to the actual pathname; and populating an entry for the exported resource in a data structure with the advertised pathname of the exported resource and the filehandle, the data structure for use in processing requests, from the clients of the storage system, to mount exported resources and enable the client to access the exported resource in the storage system with the filehandle.