Parallelize NFS with pNFS
Oracle, Friday, August 22nd, 2025
We hear more and more about data hungry workloads and the ravenous appetite of AI training. There are a number of storage solutions that can help with data hungry workloads. We've seen a rise in interest in the Lustre file system, GPFS and some other main stream cluster file systems. However don't overlook NFS for these workloads: pNFS offers a native Linux kernel mechanism to achieve very high data throughput.
Unlike traditional NFS, which fetches data from a single storage server, pNFS enables clients to read and write data across multiple storage servers simultaneously. This parallel access to storage servers dramatically boosts data throughput, particularly when paired with modern, high-speed networks.
This blog will introduce the fundamentals of pNFS and provide a step-by-step guide to setting up a pNFS environment with Block layout type. By following these steps, you'll establish a functional test environment to explore pNFS components and gain a better understanding of pNFS's parallel file system capabilities. Use this setup to gain hands-on experience with pNFS and experiment with its features.