A system and method are disclosed for using free storage capacity on a
plurality of storage media as a virtual storage device on a computer
network comprising a plurality of computers. A first portion of each
storage medium stores data. To implement Virtual Network Attached Storage
(VNAS), the respective "free" second portions of each storage medium are
aggregated into a shared storage volume. Computers on the network may
mount the shared storage volume at one of a plurality of mount points and
may store data on the shared storage volume. VNAS may be implemented in a
peer-to-peer manner whereby each computer acts as a server for the data
stored on its part of the shared storage volume (i.e., the second portion
of its storage media). VNAS may be used to implement a system and method
for managing data fail-over.