Distributed Filesystem

A Distributed Filesystem (DFS) allows data on one or more servers to be shared throughout the network, using a mechanism that is normally transparent to the user. In this way, users do not need to be aware that the data they are using does not physically reside on their local machine.

Many types of DFSs are available, each one working slightly differently. The one we are interested in here is NFS.

Several programs are supplied with Solaris for the purpose of administering a DFS, and while they default to controlling NFS, they are not limited to it.