Linux has always made a great file server, but now a whole new breed of open source filesystems is taking the file server idea to the next level. We show you what they are and tell you how they work.
Way back in the day, if you wanted to share files between two computers, you copied them onto a floppy disk and walked them over to the other computer. This was known as “sneaker net.” What a difference a couple of years makes. Today, personal computers running Microsoft Windows and Apple’s MacOS inherently support sharing disks and directories with other systems of the same type. And of course, the ability to share disks, directories, and files over a network has always been a hallmark of Unix and Unix-like systems (such as Linux).
Unfortunately, all of that convenience does not come without a price. Sharing filesystems over networks, and managing updates to files and directories in those filesystems, becomes more complex when many computers and users can access those shared resources. Filesystems that can be shared over networks are more properly known as “distributed filesystems” because shared files and directories are available on (or distributed across) many different computers on a network. Most distributed filesystems are examples of client/server computing, where servers export files and directories and accept updates to them, while clients import files and directories and send updates.
The history of distributed…
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