Patent ID: 8799335

Claim:
A method of supporting coordinated access to a file system's shared disk storage subsystem using an automatic alignment of a parallel file access protocol and metadata management on a per object basis of said storage subsystem, wherein active file servers in a cluster have equivalent access to shared data of said file system, the method comprising: in response to a client's request to access a file stored by said file system in said storage system using a parallel file access protocol: if said file system has selected a metadata manager of said file, using said metadata manager to coordinate access to said file's metadata, if said file system has not selected a metadata manager of said file, selecting the file server that received said request as the metadata manager for said file until a file close request operation is received, performing a file open request operation for said file to the selected metadata manager, said performing being done by a file server that received said request; opening said file and creating a file handle of said file, encoding a file server ID, of the file server selected as the metadata manager of said file, in the file handle such that said file system's file servers are enabled to identify which file server is said file's metadata manager, returning the file handle to said client for performing I/O to said file; if the file server that received said client's request is not the metadata manager and a metadata manager already exists for the file but no clients have said file open, migrating the metadata management from the file server, previously selected as the metadata manager of said file, to a file server in the cluster that at least one client has said file open.