Systems and methods for load balancing drives and servers by pushing a copy of a frequently accessed file to another disk drive

Abstract

A file system that balances the loading of filers and the capacity of drives that are associated with the filers is described. The file system includes a first disk drive that includes a first unused capacity and a second disk drive that includes a second unused capacity, wherein the second unused capacity is smaller than the first unused capacity. The file system further includes a first filer that is configured to fill requests from clients through access to at least the first disk drive. The file system further includes a second filer that is configured to fill requests from clients through access to at least the second disk drive. The second filer is configured to select an infrequently accessed file from the second disk drive and to push the infrequently accessed files to the first disk drive, thereby improving a balance of unused capacity between the first and second disk drives without substantially affecting a loading for each of the first and second filers.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.