The Network File System

The Network File System

1. The basic idea behind NFS is that each file server provides a standardized view of its local file system. In other words, it should not matter how that local file system is implemented

   • NFS has been implemented for a large number of different operating systems, although the Unix versions are predominant. For virtually all modern Unix systems, NFS is generally implemented following the layered architecture
     • • The Network file system use a Simple client-server architecture

2. NFS comes with a communication protocol that allows clients to access the files stored on a server

3. Relation with the examples in the book

   • Simple client-server architecture
     • In the basic client-server model, processes in a distributed system are divided into two groups.
       • A client is a process that requests a service from a server by sending it a request and subsequently waiting for the server’s reply.
       • A server is a process implementing a specific service, for example, a file system service or a database service
         • This client-server interaction, also known as request-reply behavior

Images and files in the map