What is Global File System?

In early days, global file system meant a distributed virtual name space built on a set of local file systems to provide transparent access to multiple, potentially distributed, systems. These global file systems had similar properties but guaranteed a same name path corresponded to the same object on all computers deploying the file system. It was also termed as distributed file systems as these file systems rely on redirection to distributed systems.

In modern times, global file systems combine cloud or any object storage, versioning and local caching to create a single, unified, globally accessible file system that does not rely on redirection to a storage device but serves files from the local cache while maintaining the single file system and all meta data in the object storage.