Data Owner

In the context of Panzura's hybrid cloud file platform CloudFS, the Data Owner is the node that currently holds the file lock, and this information is held in the file’s metadata.

The Data Owner state is transported via metadata snapshots. A node wanting to assume Data Ownership for a file checks its metadata for the node on which the file was created — the Origin and then communicates directly with the Origin, to request the lock and become the Authoritative Write Node.

If the lock is sitting with the Origin, it will either approve the request, or deny it if the file is open for editing. If the Origin does not currently hold the lock, it tells the requesting node which location to request it from.