Lustre is a leading technology in the new class of parallel I/O technologies and is an emerging opensource standard for scalable HPC and cluster computers. The Lustre File System currently powers over two Petaflops of aggregated computing capability measured across scalable cluster computers all over the world. This next generation file system technology is currently used on nearly 1/3 of the world's Top100 fastest computers. Applying intelligence throughout its unique architecture, the file system separates metadata services away from the data path and through intelligent lock management - scales throughput and file operations performance as the system grows.

Lustre turns commodity servers into smart storage management devices that serve and store data objects. The objects are dynamically distributed horizontally across the servers, shattering the performance limitations common on traditional storage systems and achieving single volume throughput levels greater than 100GB/s.

While many approaches can be taken to building up a Lustre environment, it is important to be aware of the trade-offs associated with various design decisions. This document articulated a number of the design implications and provides the reader with information to make informed decisions to scale high-performance cluster file I/O.