The access cache stores entries consisting of one or more export rules that apply to clients attempting to access volumes or qtrees. These entries are stored for a certain amount of time before they are refreshed. The refresh time is determined by access cache parameters and depends on the type of access cache entry.

You can specify access cache parameters for individual SVMs. This allows the parameters to differ according to SVM access requirements. Access cache entries that are not actively used are not refreshed, which reduces unnecessary and wasteful communication with external name serves.

An NFS client attempts to access a volume on a cluster. ONTAP matches the client to an export policy rule and determines that the client gets access based on the export policy rule configuration. ONTAP stores the export policy rule in the access cache as a positive entry. By default, ONTAP keeps the positive entry in the access cache for one hour (3,600 seconds), and then automatically refreshes the entry to keep the information current.

To prevent the access cache from filling up unnecessarily, there is an additional parameter to clear existing access cache entries that have not been used for a certain time period to decide client access. This -harvest-timeout parameter has an allowed range of 60 through 2,592,000 seconds and a default setting of 86,400 seconds.