Patent ID: 7392261

Claim:
A method maintaining information on a namespace comprised of filesets shared by clients over a network, comprising: maintaining zone information on at least one zone, wherein each zone associates at least one client, at least one of the filesets in the namespace, and at least one storage pool, wherein for each zone, the associated at least one fileset and at least one storage pool are accessible to the at least one client associated in the zone; receiving a request from one of the clients for filesets accessible to the client in the namespace; determining from the zone information at least one zone associating the requesting client with at least one fileset and at least one storage pool; providing the requesting client with the information on the at least one fileset indicated in the determined at least one zone associating the client; receiving one rule identifying a condition and storage pools in which to store files if the condition is satisfied; determining whether the storage pools identified in the received rule are included in multiple zones; and rejecting the received rule in response to determining that a specified fileset in the condition is not included in one zone including the storage pools identified in the received rule.