The Lustre distributed file system has played a crucial role in a wide range of IT environments. The system has been deployed beneficially in small-scale clusters, but is also a crucial component in many of the world’s supercomputers, including Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Jaguar. Xyratex, a Seagate Cloud Builder Alliance partner, has shown leadership in the Lustre community through its contributions to new releases and support for Open Lustre. However, the company recently solidified its position by acquiring the Lustre trademark, website and intellectual property from Oracle.
“Lustre is a powerful open source file system, and Xyratex strongly believes that all members of the Lustre community need to continue to play a part in the evolution of the code and the benefits it delivers over the long term,” said Steve Barber, CEO of Xyratex. “We want to ensure that current Lustre customers get the best possible feature roadmap and support, and we intend to engage the entire community to advance the Lustre technology. We also appreciate Oracle’s support of Lustre, and their efforts to ensure the long-term success of the technology.”
Originally released in 2003, the Lustre file system has become popular for sectors that require high performance at a large scale. Six of the top 10 high-performance computing clusters in the world are currently supported by the technology. It has also paved the way for highly scalable architecture in the meteorology, simulation, oil and gas, life science, rich media and finance sectors. Xyratex plans to advance Lustre by providing added support from the company’s cloud storage offering, ClusterStor. Tommy Minyard, director of advanced computing systems at Texas Advanced Computing Center, commended the acquisition, highlighting Xyratex’s in-depth knowledge of Lustre and highly valued contributions to the technology.
