Gluster users - Aug 2009 - hi, all! some questions about metadata and file index?

i has spent some days to try to understand these problems distinctly~~

some guys told me that the metadata was stored with files or directories as
their extended attributes. and some other guys told me that there is a
server to maintain the file index, by which we could locate a specific file
on which storage server/brick.

so i CONCLUSE that glusterfs seperate the metadata and file index, instead
of metadata server in traditional clustered filesystem like Lustre.

is it right? pls correct me if something is wrong~~

thanks in advance!