1. A method of software execution by a computer, comprising: using, by the computer, minitransactions that include a set of compare items and a set of write items stored in a host to atomically modify data structures in storage nodes of a distributed file system; validating, by the computer, cached data stored in the host by comparing a version number of an inode stored in the host with a version number of the inode stored in one of the storage nodes; and allowing, by the computer, the host to write to the data structures with the cached data when the version number of the inode stored in the host matches the version number of the inode stored in the one of the storage nodes.