Patent ID: 8782661

Claim:
A file system that balances the loading of servers and the capacity of drives associated with the servers, the file system comprising: a first disk drive including a first unused capacity; a second disk drive including a second unused capacity, wherein the second unused capacity is smaller than the first unused capacity; a first server configured to fill requests from clients through access to at least the first disk drive; and a second server configured to fill requests from clients through access to at least the second disk drive, and configured to improve a balance of unused capacity between the first and second disk drives without substantially affecting a throughput for each of the first and second servers, said improving comprising: determining access frequency information and size information for one or more files, selecting, based at least in part on the access frequency information and the size information, an infrequently accessed file from the second disk drive, and pushing said infrequently accessed file to the first disk drive, wherein the second server pushes the infrequently accessed file through communication with the first server.