Direct Access File System (DAFS) is a

network file system Network File System (NFS) is a distributed file system protocol originally developed by Sun Microsystems (Sun) in 1984, allowing a user on a client computer to access files over a computer network much like local storage is accessed. NFS, li ...

that is based on

NFSv4 Network File System (NFS) is a distributed file system protocol originally developed by Sun Microsystems (Sun) in 1984, allowing a user on a client computer to access files over a computer network much like local storage is accessed. NFS, li ...

and the

Virtual Interface A virtual network interface (VIF) is an abstract virtualized representation of a computer network interface that may or may not correspond directly to a network interface controller. Operating system level It is common for the operating system ke ...

(VI) data transfer mechanism. DAFS uses remote direct memory access (RDMA) to perform efficient network access to data in remote files. This lowers latency by reducing the number of steps needed to process and transfer remote data.

File locking File locking is a mechanism that restricts access to a computer file, or to a region of a file, by allowing only one user (computing), user or computer process, process to modify or delete it at a specific time and to prevent reading of the file w ...

is cached on the client side, eliminating the need to access the file server for subsequent data access. The DAFS was initially developed by Network Appliance Inc. An 85-member industry association named the DAFS Collaborative was assembled to complete the specification. With the draft release of v1.0, it was then passed to the

Internet Engineering Task Force The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster or requirements and ...

(IETF). Version 1.0 of the DAFS application programming interface was completed in 2001. The same year, a working version of DAFS was demonstrated using the

Oracle database Oracle Database (commonly referred to as Oracle DBMS, Oracle Autonomous Database, or simply as Oracle) is a multi-model database management system produced and marketed by Oracle Corporation. It is a database commonly used for running online ...

. DAFS beta version 1.0 is available from

SourceForge SourceForge is a web service that offers software consumers a centralized online location to control and manage open-source software projects and research business software. It provides source code repository hosting, bug tracking, mirrori ...

under the

BSD license BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses, imposing minimal restrictions on the use and distribution of covered software. This is in contrast to copyleft licenses, which have share-alike requirements. The original BSD li ...

. It was last updated in 2004.

References

{{reflist, refs= {{cite book , author1=Troppens, Ulf , author2=Mueller-Friedt, Wolfgang , author3=Erkens, Rainer , author4=Wolafka, Rainer , author5=Haustein, Nils , page
147
��148 , title=Storage Networks Explained: Basics and Application of Fibre Channel SAN, NAS, ISCSI,InfiniBand and FCoE , url=https://archive.org/details/storagenetworkse00trop , url-access=limited , edition=2nd , publisher=John Wiley and Sons , year=2009 , isbn=978-0-470-74143-6 {{cite book , first=Jon William , last=Toigo , year=2004 , page=69 , title=The holy grail of network storage management , publisher=Prentice Hall PTR , isbn=0-13-028416-5 {{cite book , first=Russell , last=Kay , date=October 21, 2002 , title=QuickStudy: Direct Access File System , work=ComputerWorld , url=http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/75191/QuickStudy_Direct_Access_File_System , accessdate=2011-04-13 {{cite web , title=Direct Access File System (DAFS) Protocol , work=DAFS Collaborative , url=http://www.dafscollaborative.org/ , accessdate=2011-04-13 {{cite web , title=DAFS, Direct Access File System , work=SourceForge , url=http://sourceforge.net/projects/dafs/ , accessdate=2011-04-13 Distributed file systems Network file systems