Patent ID: 8015355

Claim:
A method for managing lock state information in a distributed file system, comprising: maintaining a set of data containers storing data, the data containers striped across a plurality of volumes, where each volume includes one or more data storage devices, a selected volume of the plurality of volumes maintained by a selected data volume node of the distributed file system; maintaining a metadata volume with the plurality of volumes, the metadata volume served by a metadata volume node of the distributed file system, the metadata volume configured to include a lock state database that stores lock state information for the plurality of volumes; communicating the lock state information from the metadata volume to the selected data volume node for storage in a lock state cache maintained by the selected data volume node; and configuring the selected data volume node to receive an access request originating is from a client, and the selected data volume node to check the lock state cache of the selected data volume to determine if the access request is permitted by entries in the lock state cache, and if there is no relevant information for the data access request in the lock state cache, sending a query from the selected data volume node to the lock state database to determine if the data access request is permitted.