Patent ID: 7996607

Claim:
A method for distributing lookup operations in a cluster comprising one or more N-blades connected to one or more D-blades, the method comprising: maintaining a D-blade storing, at one or more storage devices, mappings between a data container attribute that defines a data container and an inode number associated with the data container; at the D-blade storing the mappings, performing the following steps: determining an identification (ID) of a D-blade in the cluster for caching the data container attribute on a storage device to which a lookup request for the data container will be directed by an N-blade, and selecting an inode number for the data container attribute so that a D-blade that serves a lookup request has a same ID as a D-blade that serves a metadata request; at a D-blade selected to cache metadata and the data container attribute, is performing: in response to receiving a metadata request from the N-blade, caching the metadata and the data container attribute and providing the metadata to a client, in response to receiving, from the N-blade, the lookup request for the data container based on the data container attribute, satisfying the received lookup request without the lookup request for the data container being sent by the N-blade to the D-blade that stores the mappings.