The MDS (metadata server) client is responsible for submitting
requests to the MDS cluster and parsing the response. We decide which
MDS to submit each request to based on cached information about the
current partition of the directory hierarchy across the cluster. A
stateful session is opened with each MDS before we submit requests to
it, and a mutex is used to control the ordering of messages within
each session.
An MDS request may generate two responses. The first indicates the
operation was a success and returns any result. A second reply is
sent when the operation commits to disk. Note that locking on the MDS
ensures that the results of updates are visible only to the updating
client before the operation commits. Requests are linked to the
containing directory so that an fsync will wait for them to commit.
If an MDS fails and/or recovers, we resubmit requests as needed. We
also reconnect existing capabilities to a recovering MDS to
reestablish that shared session state. Old dentry leases are
invalidated.
Signed-off-by: Sage Weil <sage@newdream.net>
