Summary

Network file systems are the oldest and most commonly used storage network technology in open-systems computing. In general, network file systems are implemented either with file server software on file server systems or as NAS products.

Client system file systems have strongly influenced the development of this technology. NFS was developed by Sun Microsystems for networking UNIX systems, and CIFS (SMB at the time) was developed by Microsoft for networking Windows systems. As a result, network file system software products are biased toward either UNIX or Windows. While NAS products can also have a bias, they can also be designed to be neutral. The most successful NAS products have been designed for client neutrality.

One of the more interesting observations to make about network file systems is that in many cases they do not actually include a special file system. Instead, network file systems incorporate client-side I/O redirection technology and a server-side application for managing client network file I/O requests.