1. A method for managing data, the method comprising the steps of: maintaining a plurality of persistent data items on persistent storage accessible to a plurality of nodes, the persistent data items including a particular data item stored at a particular location on said persistent storage; assigning exclusive ownership of each of the persistent data items to one of the nodes, wherein a particular node of said plurality of nodes is assigned exclusive ownership of said particular data item; when any node wants an operation to be performed that involves said particular data item, the node that desires the operation to be performed ships the operation to the particular node for the particular node to perform the operation on the particular data item as said particular data item is exclusively owned by said particular node; in response to a failure that involves a set of persistent data items exclusively owned by a single node, performing the steps of: assigning, to each of two or more recovery nodes, exclusive ownership of a subset of the set of persistent data items that were involved in the failure; and each recovery node of the two or more recovery nodes performing a recovery operation on the subset of persistent data items that were assigned to the recovery node.