On to NFS

Explore the design and implementation of the classic Network File System (NFS), focusing on NFS version 2. Understand its open protocol approach, stateless communication, and how it achieves simple and fast server crash recovery to maintain client productivity.

We'll cover the following...

- Focus: simple and fast server crash recovery

One of the earliest and quite successful distributed systems was developed by Sun Microsystems, and is known as the Sun Network File System (or NFS)“The Sun Network File System: Design, Implementation and Experience” by Russel Sandberg. USENIX Summer 1986. The original NFS paper; though a bit of a challenging read, it is worthwhile to see the source of these wonderful ideas.. In defining NFS, Sun took an unusual approach: instead of building a proprietary and closed system, Sun instead developed an open protocol that simply specified the exact message formats ...