A file is the basic object in a FlexCache cache, but sometimes only some of a file's data is cached. If the data is cached and valid, a read request for that data is fulfilled without access to the origin volume.
When a data block from a specific file is requested from a FlexCache volume, then the attributes of that file are cached, and that file is considered to be cached, even if not all of its data blocks are present.
If any part of a file is changed, the entire file is invalidated and ejected from the cache.
For this reason, data sets consisting of one large file that is frequently updated may not be good candidates for a FlexCache implementation.
Note: The cache is not affected when only the access time of a file is updated.
Note: Directories and symbolic links are also cached. In this document, the term file is used to refer to these objects as well.
