In one example, a method includes receiving metadata in the form of a modification to metadata represented by a file system namespace abstraction, and the file system namespace abstraction corresponds to less than the entire file system namespace. Next, the file system namespace abstraction is updated based on the received metadata. Next, a determination is made whether or not caching is enabled for the file system namespace abstraction. If caching is enabled for the file system namespace abstraction, the updated file system namespace abstraction is cached in SSD storage.