Patent ID: 8682916

Claim:
A central network file manager apparatus comprising: one or more processors; and memory coupled to the one or more processors and configured to store an authoritative copy of one or more files selected from at least one of data files or metadata files and wherein the one or more processors are configured to execute program instructions stored in the memory comprising: communicating mirror copies of each authoritative copy of the one or more files to each of a plurality of remote network file managers; obtaining updated file data from one of the plurality of remote network file managers when one of the mirror copies is updated by a client at the one remote network file manager; updating the authoritative copy corresponding to the updated mirror copy with the updated file data; notifying each of the other remote network file managers that the respective mirror copy stored thereon, and corresponding to the updated mirror copy, is no longer valid; and asynchronously communicating a mirror copy of the updated authoritative copy to the other remote network file managers using a lazy mirroring technique based on available network bandwidth.