Techniques for decoupling the commit and replay of file system metadata updates in a clustered file system (CFS) are provided. In one embodiment, a CFS layer of a computer system can receive a file I/O operation from a client application, where the file I/O operation involves an update to a file system metadata resource maintained on persistent storage. In response, a journaling component of the CFS layer can execute a commit phase for committing the update to a journal on the persistent storage. The CFS layer can then return an acknowledgment to the client application indicating that the file I/O operation is complete, where the acknowledgement is returned prior to completion of a replay phase configured to propagate the update from the journal to one or more locations on the persistent storage where the file system metadata resource is actually stored.