A method for maintaining high-availability of file system instances is described. The method includes maintaining replica file system instances such as a first replica file system instance on a first computing node and a second replica file system instance on a second computing node. Further, a third computing node is instructed to create a sparse replica file system instance on the third computing node in response to detection of a failure condition associated with the second computing node. Moreover, a data update request is directed to the first replica file system instance and the sparse replica file system.