Maybe you've asked yourself recently; "Hmm, I wonder what's new in NFSv4?" Maybe (and more likely) you haven't; but you should. During the last few years, NFSv4 has become the version of choice for many users, and there are lots of great reasons for making the transition from NFSv3 to NFSv4. Not the least of which is that it's a relatively straightforward transition. But there's more; NFSv4 offers features unavailable in NFSv3. Parallelization, better security, WAN awareness and many other features make it suitable as a file protocol for the next generation of applications. As a proof point, lately we've seen new clients of NFSv4 servers beyond the standard Linux client, including support in VMware's vSphere for virtual machine datastores accessible via NFSv4. In this updated white paper, An Updated Overview of NFSv4, we explain how NFSv4 is better suited to a wide range of datacenter and high performance compute (HPC) uses than its predecessor NFSv3, as well as providing resources for migrating from v3 to v4. You'll learn:

• How NFSv4 overcomes statelessness issues associated with NFSv3
• Advantages and features of NFSv4.1 & NFSv4.2
• What parallel NFS (pNFS) and layouts do
• How NFSv4 supports performant WAN access

We believe this document makes the argument that users should, at the very least, be evaluating and deploying NFSv4 for use in new projects; and ideally, should be using it wholesale in their existing environments. The information in this white paper  is meant to be comprehensive and educational and we hope you find it helpful. If you have questions or comments after reading this white paper, please comment on this blog and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.