Method and system for moving an object from a source partition server to a target partition server in a distributed file system having multiple partition servers. Each object has at least one associated and linked parent object, and each partition server owns a subset of objects of the file system. The object migration is accomplished by creating a copy in a target partition server of a selected object from a source partition server. At the source partition server, a forwarding link is created that references the copy in the target partition server. The copy is linked to the parent object of the selected object, and requests for access to the selected object are responded to with the forwarding link.