Namespace Database (NSDB) Protocol for Federated File Systems
RFC 7532

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Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)                        J. Lentini
Request for Comments: 7532                                        NetApp
Category: Standards Track                                      R. Tewari
ISSN: 2070-1721                                              IBM Almaden
                                                           C. Lever, Ed.
                                                      Oracle Corporation
                                                              March 2015

     Namespace Database (NSDB) Protocol for Federated File Systems

Abstract

   This document describes a file system federation protocol that
   enables file access and namespace traversal across collections of
   independently administered fileservers.  The protocol specifies a set
   of interfaces by which fileservers with different administrators can
   form a fileserver federation that provides a namespace composed of
   the file systems physically hosted on and exported by the constituent
   fileservers.

Status of This Memo

   This is an Internet Standards Track document.

   This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
   (IETF).  It represents the consensus of the IETF community.  It has
   received public review and has been approved for publication by the
   Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG).  Further information on
   Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 5741.

   Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
   and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
   http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7532.

Lentini, et al.              Standards Track                    [Page 1]
RFC 7532        NSDB Protocol for Federated File Systems      March 2015

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2015 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
   (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
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   to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

   This document may contain material from IETF Documents or IETF
   Contributions published or made publicly available before November
   10, 2008.  The person(s) controlling the copyright in some of this
   material may not have granted the IETF Trust the right to allow
   modifications of such material outside the IETF Standards Process.
   Without obtaining an adequate license from the person(s) controlling
   the copyright in such materials, this document may not be modified
   outside the IETF Standards Process, and derivative works of it may
   not be created outside the IETF Standards Process, except to format
   it for publication as an RFC or to translate it into languages other
   than English.

Lentini, et al.              Standards Track                    [Page 2]
RFC 7532        NSDB Protocol for Federated File Systems      March 2015

Table of Contents

   1. Introduction ....................................................4
      1.1. Requirements Language ......................................5
   2. Overview of Features and Concepts ...............................5
      2.1. File-Access Protocol .......................................5
      2.2. File-Access Client .........................................5
      2.3. Fileserver .................................................5
      2.4. Referral ...................................................5
      2.5. Namespace ..................................................6
      2.6. Fileset ....................................................6
      2.7. Fileset Name (FSN) .........................................6
      2.8. Fileset Location (FSL) .....................................7
           2.8.1. The NFS URI Scheme ..................................8
           2.8.2. Mutual Consistency across Fileset Locations ........10
           2.8.3. Caching of Fileset Locations .......................11
           2.8.4. Generating a Referral from Fileset Locations .......12
      2.9. Namespace Database (NSDB) .................................13
           2.9.1. NSDB Client ........................................14
      2.10. Junctions and Referrals ..................................14
      2.11. Unified Namespace and the Root Fileset ...................15
      2.12. UUID Considerations ......................................15
   3. Examples .......................................................16
      3.1. Creating a Fileset and Its FSL(s) .........................16
           3.1.1. Creating a Fileset and an FSN ......................17