File Server- For Effective Maintenance of Files

A file server is a system where the files are stored and can be retrieved whenever needed. It includes data that can be accessed after the execution of the program in order to store, retrieve and update data, as well as manage the available space on the device where it is stored. The file server is such kind of system which is used in many places like- companies or institutions, banks, schools, etc. It is most essential to maintain file server, as it organizes the files efficiently and is accessed from one system to another without damaging data. The most important purpose of having a system called file server is used to manage user data which means to store, retrieve and to update the data. File System should be present in all computers to access the data by file name or directory and to access data regions on a storage device. There must be a tight coupling between the operating system and file system, since programs retrieve data specifying the size of a memory buffer and file system transferring data from the media to the buffer. With the absence of file system, operating system fails to retrieve the damaged data.

To maintain physical location of the files, storage devices like hard disks, optical disks or flash memory is used by file systems. These may provide access to the data on file server by acting as clients for a network protocol. When a file is created, the file server allocates space for the data. These File servers allocate space in a granular manner. When a file is created and area of contiguous space is not available for its initial allocation, the space must be assigned in fragments. This happens usually when multiple physical units appear on the device. When a file is modified in such a way that it becomes larger, it may exceed the space that is allocated to it initially and another allocation is assigned in some other place and the file becomes fragmented. This is called free space fragmentation. With the support of file server, files are created, modified and deleted according to the need. Each and every file systems have their own functional limit that defines the maximum storable data capacity within the system. Such file servers are not compared to database that are maintained by cloud computing services. These servers are independent and connected to LAN.