On Thu, Oct 02, 2008 at 01:56:41AM +0530, dhiraj_c_at_students.iiit.ac.in wrote:
> I have a small doubt regarding the replication process in coda file system.
> 
> Suppose a volume is replicated between 2 or 3 servers and is mounted on
> some X number of clients. Now if these clients are accessing different
> files (mainly reading) from this volume simultaneously, does only a
> particular server (scm) serves these files or any of the server having the
> replicated copy serves the files?

Clients fetch the metadata/attribute information from all available
servers, this is how differences between the replicas are discovered.
As we fetch these attributes we track response times and use this to
adjust estimated network bandwidth and latency values.

The file contents is then fetched from the server that has the best
estimated bandwidth and lowest response time. If the estimates are
correct this tends to be the nearer, faster, or less loaded server.

Jan