Lustre is a parallel distributed file system, generally used for large scale cluster computing. The name Lustre is a portmanteau word derived from Linux and cluster.^[1] Lustre is available under the GNU GPL (v2 only) and provides a high performance file system for computer clusters ranging in size from small workgroup clusters to large-scale, multi-site clusters.

Because Lustre has high performance capabilities and open licensing, it is often used in supercomputers. At the present time, fifteen of the top 30 supercomputers in the world have Lustre file systems in them, including the world's fastest TOP500 supercomputer, IBM Sequoia.

Lustre file systems are scalable and can support tens of thousands of client systems, tens of petabytes (PB) of storage, and hundreds of gigabytes per second (GB/s) of aggregate I/O throughput.^[2][3] This makes Lustre a popular choice for businesses with large data centers such as Internet service providers, financial institutions, and the oil and gas industries.^[4]