Patent ID: 8473582

Claim:
A method for facilitating access to data in a network, comprising: maintaining a scalable multi-node file system including a cache in a local cluster file system including multiple computing nodes; caching file data in the cache by fetching file data on demand from a remote cluster file system into the cache over the network, wherein the local file data corresponds to the file data in the remote cluster file system, during connection between the local cluster file system and the remote cluster file system, upon detecting a cache miss, fetching file data on demand from the remote cluster file system into the cache over the network, wherein caching file data further comprises an application node signaling a gateway node to fetch the file data and the gateway node fetching the file data from the remote cluster file system into the cache over the network for access by the application node, wherein fetching the file data from the remote cluster file system further includes fetching the file data from the remote cluster file system into the cache over a wide area network using a parallel network file system data transfer; upon disconnection from the remote cluster file system, supporting file data and metadata update and access operations at the cache; and upon reconnection to the remote cluster file system over the network, synchronizing the remote cluster file system with the information cached in the cache during the disconnection.