Patent ID: 8458181

Claim:
A method comprising: delegating management of a first fileset of a plurality of filesets in a clustered redirect-on-write file system to a first node of a plurality of nodes in a cluster, wherein management of the plurality of filesets is distributed among multiple of the plurality of nodes in the cluster, wherein each of the plurality of nodes in the cluster are designated to operate in the cluster as a server node, a client node, or both a client and a server node; wherein the first node has been designated to operate as either a server node or as both a server and a client node in the cluster; wherein said delegating management of the first fileset to the first node comprises updating clustered filesystem metadata to reflect that the first node manages the first fileset, and provisioning a set of free blocks of a plurality of free blocks to the first node, wherein the plurality of free blocks correspond to a plurality of logical units of aggregate storage space of storage devices of the cluster that are available for provisioning to those of the plurality of nodes that manage filesets, wherein the set of free blocks are provisioned to the first node for allocation by the first node responsive to requests for writing to the first fileset, wherein said provisioning the set of free blocks to the first node comprises updating a cluster free block structure to indicate that the set of free blocks have been provisioned.