Frequently Asked Questions

Welcome to the Lustre FAQ!

What is Lustre?
Lustre is a scale-out architecture distributed parallel filesystem. Metadata services and storage are segregated from data services and storage.

What is the difference between a server (MDS/OSS) and a target (MDT/OST)?
A target is the storage device where object (file) or metadata is kept. The servers service request from clients on their behalf. Clients do not access storage directly.

Why does lists.lustre.org say "The list overview page has been disabled temporarily"?
The mailing lists at lists.lustre.org are running on a fully vendor managed solution at DreamHost. Unfortunately, they have disabled the list overview page for all of their customers, and they have no definitive plan to correct that in the near future. "Temporarily" apparently really means "permanently". While this is unfortunate, DreamHost's mailing list servers are pleasantly fast, low in maintenance, and low in cost. We will just need to live with this minor inconvenience. In the mean time, you can get a full list of mailing lists from Mailing Lists and IRC.

What do all these acronyms mean?

 * IDIF - ID into FID? (IGIF for data)
 * IGIF - inode/generation into FID (specific type of FID reserved for compatibility from Lustre 1.x)
 * FID - File IDentifier
 * LOD - Logical Object Device
 * LOV - Logical Object Volume
 * MDC - MetaData Client
 * MDD - Metadata Device Driver
 * MDS - MetaData Server
 * MDT - MetaData Target
 * MGS - ManaGement Server
 * MGT - ManaGement Target
 * OFD - Object Filter Device
 * OSC - Object Storage Client
 * OSD - Object Storage Device
 * OSP - Object Storage Proxy
 * OSS - Object Storage Server
 * OST - Object Storage Target

When is the next Major release?
We plan to tag and build Major releases of Lustre every six months, in late March and late September.

When is the next Maintenance Release?
There are no longer public Maintenance Releases. Maintenance Releases used to be a public service from the Lustre development team at Intel, but they have decided to begin keeping their maintenance branches and releases private. Only customers and business partners will have direct access to Intel's maintenance releases. For a longer explanation, see Retired Release Terminology.

The Lustre Open Source development community remains committed to regularly creating Major Releases along the master branch.