Software-based network attached storage services hosted on massively distributed parallel computing networks

A computer-implemented method comprising:

• configuring a distributed processing system of a plurality of distributed devices coupled to a network, wherein the plurality of distributed devices include respective client agents configured to process respective portions of a workload for the distributed processing system,
• wherein the respective client agents for particular distributed devices of the plurality of distributed devices have corresponding software-based network attached storage (NAS) components configured to assess unused or under-utilized storage resources in selected distributed devices of the plurality of distributed devices;
• representing with the corresponding software-based NAS component that the selected distributed devices respectively comprise NAS devices having an available amount of storage resources related to the unused and under-utilized storage resources for the selected distributed devices;
• processing one or more of data storage or access workloads for the distributed processing system by accessing data from or storing data to at least a portion of the available amount of storage resources to provide NAS service to a client device coupled to the network;
• and
• enabling at least one of the selected distributed devices to function as a location distributed device to store location information associated with data stored by the selected distributed devices through use of the respective client agents for the particular distributed device.