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I have been reading some articles and I didn't find the answer for which I am looking for. What I understand is the following:

Both systems span over a network. A distributed file system features several places where the file-system is kept(for example each workstation may have a copy of it), thus creating many copies in case something happens to one or more of the nodes. The different nodes are synchronized in some logic (and conflicts are resolved)

A Cluster file-system is a distributed file system with just one node, meaning that everyone takes the data from one node and updates it there.

Are the following statements correct, if not what is the difference?

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1 Answers1

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The same word can have multiple meanings depending on who's doing the talking and what they're talking about. In general, a distributed filesystem is like CIFS or NFS, where the nodes housing the actual files can be served from multiple nodes. With CIFS this is done via DFS (literally "Distributed File System" where clients get referrals to which server houses the requested file/folder) and with NFS this is done via pNFS ("Parallel NFS" which is more about removing performance bottlenecks by enabling parallel I/O).

A clustered filesystem is one where the filesystem metadata is structured to allow multiple nodes to have concurrent access to the same block device. Usually this involves each node that mounts the filesystem to have its own journal and implementing filesystem locks that are transmitted via the HA cluster's heartbeat network.

Bratchley
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