Disconnected operation in the Coda File System

Abstract

Disconnected operation is a mode of operation that enables a client to continue accessing critical data during temporary failures of a shared data repository. An important, though not exclusive, application of disconnected operation is in supporting portable computers. In this paper, we show that disconnected operation is feasible, efficient and usable by describing its design and implementation in the Coda File System. The central idea behind our work is that caching of data , now widely used for performance, can also be exploited to improve availability.