diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/nfs/00-INDEX b/Documentation/filesystems/nfs/00-INDEX
index 3225a56..a57e124 100644
--- a/Documentation/filesystems/nfs/00-INDEX
+++ b/Documentation/filesystems/nfs/00-INDEX
@@ -12,6 +12,8 @@
 	- how to install and setup the Linux NFS/RDMA client and server software
 nfsroot.txt
 	- short guide on setting up a diskless box with NFS root filesystem.
+pnfs.txt
+	- short explanation of some of the internals of the pnfs client code
 rpc-cache.txt
 	- introduction to the caching mechanisms in the sunrpc layer.
 idmapper.txt
diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/nfs/pnfs.txt b/Documentation/filesystems/nfs/pnfs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bc0b9cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/filesystems/nfs/pnfs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,48 @@
+Reference counting in pnfs:
+==========================
+
+The are several inter-related caches.  We have layouts which can
+reference multiple devices, each of which can reference multiple data servers.
+Each data server can be referenced by multiple devices.  Each device
+can be referenced by multiple layouts.  To keep all of this straight,
+we need to reference count.
+
+
+struct pnfs_layout_hdr
+----------------------
+The on-the-wire command LAYOUTGET corresponds to struct
+pnfs_layout_segment, usually referred to by the variable name lseg.
+Each nfs_inode may hold a pointer to a cache of of these layout
+segments in nfsi->layout, of type struct pnfs_layout_hdr.
+
+We reference the header for the inode pointing to it, across each
+outstanding RPC call that references it (LAYOUTGET, LAYOUTRETURN,
+LAYOUTCOMMIT), and for each lseg held within.
+
+Each header is also (when non-empty) put on a list associated with
+struct nfs_client (cl_layouts).  Being put on this list does not bump
+the reference count, as the layout is kept around by the lseg that
+keeps it in the list.
+
+deviceid_cache
+--------------
+lsegs reference device ids, which are resolved per nfs_client and
+layout driver type.  The device ids are held in a RCU cache (struct
+nfs4_deviceid_cache).  The cache itself is referenced across each
+mount.  The entries (struct nfs4_deviceid) themselves are held across
+the lifetime of each lseg referencing them.
+
+RCU is used because the deviceid is basically a write once, read many
+data structure.  The hlist size of 32 buckets needs better
+justification, but seems reasonable given that we can have multiple
+deviceid's per filesystem, and multiple filesystems per nfs_client.
+
+The hash code is copied from the nfsd code base.  A discussion of
+hashing and variations of this algorithm can be found at:
+http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/browse_thread/thread/9522965e2b8d3809
+
+data server cache
+-----------------
+file driver devices refer to data servers, which are kept in a module
+level cache.  Its reference is held over the lifetime of the deviceid
+pointing to it.