1. A method for incrementally indexing information contained in files within a distributed file system residing upon a virtual file server assembled by integrating a plurality of file servers comprising the steps of: upon the commencement of a close operation on one of the files of the distributed file system after information contained in the file being closed has been changed: parsing the information contained in the file; and creating inverted index entries from the parsed information; sorting the inverted index entries; and merging the sorted inverted index entries into inverted file records of an inverted file that is associated with content of the distributed file system; wherein parsing of the information contained in the file, creating the inverted index entries, sorting of the inverted index entries and merging the sorted inverted index entries into the inverted file records are completed before the close operation is completed.