Direct Access File System (DAFS) is a file-access sharing
protocol that uses memory-to-memory interconnect
architectures, such as VI and
InfiniBand. DAFS is
designed for storage area networks (
SANs) to provide bulk
data transfer directly between the application
buffers of two machines without having to packetize
the data. With DAFS an
application can transfer
data to and from application buffers without using the
operating system, which frees up the
processor and operating system for other processes
and allows files to be accessed by
servers using
several different operating systems.