System and method for providing virtual network attached storage using excess distributed storage capacity

摘要

A system and method are disclosed for using free storage capacity on a plurality of storage media as a virtual storage device on a computer network comprising a plurality of computers. A first portion of each storage medium stores data. To implement Virtual Network Attached Storage (VNAS), the respective "free" second portions of each storage medium are aggregated into a shared storage volume. Computers on the network may mount the shared storage volume at one of a plurality of mount points and may store data on the shared storage volume. VNAS may be implemented in a peer-to-peer manner whereby each computer acts as a server for the data stored on its part of the shared storage volume (i.e., the second portion of its storage media). VNAS may be used to implement a system and method for managing data fail-over.