Patent ID: 8447762

Claim:
A method for accessing files, the method comprising: receiving from a network, by a file system apparatus, a file-access request from a client, wherein the file-access request contains a virtual file handle; extracting, by the file system apparatus, a client unique identifier from the virtual file handle, wherein prior to receiving the file-access request from the client, receiving a file-opening request that contains a file name and a parent-directory virtual file handle and combining, by the file system apparatus, the file name and the parent-directory virtual file handle into a combination name for use in generating and providing the client unique identifier to the client for inclusion in the virtual file handle of the file access request; searching, by the file system apparatus, a first table of file translation entries for a matching entry that matches the client unique identifier; reading, by the file system apparatus, a server identifier from the matching entry; obtaining, by the file system apparatus, a native file handle using the server identifier and the file-access request from the client; replacing, by the file system apparatus, the virtual file handle in the file-access request with the native file handle to generate a translated file-access request; and sending, by the file system apparatus, the translated file-access request over the network to a selected one of a plurality of storage apparatuses.