[Term of the Day]: Distributed File System

Term of the Day

"Distributed File System"

Definition — What is DFS?

DFS, the acronym of Distributed File System, is a method that enables clients to store and access remote files on a client/server architecture.

With a DFS, data is stored on a central server but allows users on the same network to manage files from any computer with proper authorization rights. This allows users to access and process data from any computer on a network

as if it was stored on their own computer.

Storage solutions based on a DFS are growing faster than ever, in both numbers of implementations and capacity of deployments as it is efficient and well-managed data and storage sharing options on a network compared to other options.

DFS has become a crucial part of Big Data as they deal with multiple clusters (computers) often. One of the main advantages of Big Data is that it goes beyond the capabilities of one single super-powerful server with extremely high computing power. As data significantly grows, storing large amounts of information across a network of machines becomes a necessity to process information.

Therefore, comes the need for a reliable system distributed file system that can handle accessing data across multiple clusters (nodes).