Scalable caching of remote file data in a cluster file system

A method for facilitating access to data in a network, comprising:

• maintaining a cache in a local cluster file system;
• and
• caching local file data in the cache using an integrated caching layer for fetching file data in parallel and on demand from a remote cluster file system into the cache over the network, wherein the caching layer operates on a multi-node cache cluster and stores data and metadata exported by the remote cluster file system across the network;
• wherein the local file data and metadata corresponds to the file data from the remote cluster file system and metadata in the remote cluster file system, the cache is visible to file system clients as a Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) compliant file system, the caching layer performing as a standalone file system cache wherein applications execute on the multi-node cache cluster using POSIX semantics via a POSIX compliant file system interface, the applications access, update, and traverse a directory tree for the remote cluster file system even when the remote cluster file system is offline, and data cache is locally consistent for updates made at the multi-node cache cluster using distributed locking for the data cache.