Patent ID: 7509322

Claim:
A method of acquiring locks on a user file by a file switch logically positioned between a client computer and a group of file servers in a computer network, the file switch including at least one network interface for communication with the client computer and the group of file servers, where the user file is divided into portions stored on a plurality of file servers, among the group of file servers, comprising: receiving, by the file switch, a user request requiring a lock on a subset of the user file; identifying, by the file switch, a subset of the file servers that store portions of the user file that together comprise the subset of the user file based on metadata stored in a metafile; sending, by the file switch, a lock request to each file server in the subset of file servers to perform a lock acquisition operation to obtain a lock on the respective portion of the user file stored therein, and to produce a lock acquisition result; and aggregating, by the file switch, the lock acquisition results from the subset of file servers to produce an aggregated lock acquisition result.