Symantec logo

About Storage Foundation Cluster File System

If the server on which the SFCFS primary is running fails, the remaining cluster nodes elect a new primary. The new primary reads the file system intent log and completes any metadata updates that were in process at the time of the failure. Application I/O from other nodes may block during this process and cause a delay. When the file system is again consistent, application processing resumes.

Because nodes using a cluster file system in secondary mode do not update file system metadata directly, failure of a secondary node does not require metadata repair. SFCFS recovery from secondary node failure is therefore faster than from primary node failure.

See Distributing load on a cluster.