A comparison of two network-based file servers

This paper compares two working file servers in terms of their design goals, implementation issues, performance, and service experience. One server, the Xerox Distributed File System (XDFS) [10], was built at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center; the other, the Cambridge File Server (CFS) [2, 3, 4], was built at the Cambridge University Computer Laboratory. Both file servers support concurrent random access to files over a network, and each offers an atomic transaction mechanism covering modifications to files.