The HPE Solutions for Qumulo utilize a modern, distributed file system designed specifically for the era of multi-petabyte unstructured data management. Unlike traditional block storage systems that organize data into LUNs or volumes, Qumulo uses a single, unified namespace where all data is organized into a hierarchical structure of Directories.

According to the HPE Qumulo Administration Guide, all advanced data services—including snapshots, quotas, and replication—are applied at the Directory level. When a storage administrator wants to protect a dataset, they create a snapshot of a specific directory (and all its subdirectories). The Snapshot Locking feature is an extension of this capability, designed to provide "immutable" data protection against ransomware or accidental deletion.

When snapshot locking is implemented, it is associated with a snapshot policy that targets a specific Directory path. Once a snapshot is locked, the metadata associated with that directory at that specific point in time becomes immutable; it cannot be deleted, modified, or shortened in its expiration period until the lock period has expired. This is fundamentally different from legacy architectures where you might lock a whole "Volume" (Option B), which can be inefficient for large datasets. Because Qumulo is a scale-out file system without the concept of traditional volumes or LUNs, "Directory" is the most granular and correct object for implementing these protection policies. This allows for massive flexibility, enabling administrators to set different retention and locking policies for different departments or projects (e.g., /marketing vs /research) all within the same physical cluster without needing to pre-allocate storage pools (Option D).