OpenSFS Welcomes Intel’s Acquisition of Whamcloud

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As reported here, Intel acquired Whamcloud last week, which prompted some discussion about how the Lustre would receive the news. Over the weekend, this letter from OpenSFS CEO Norman Morse appeared on Linkedin’s Lustre Filesystem group:

Open Scalable File Systems congratulates Whamcloud on their acquisition by Intel.

We at OpenSFS believe this acquisition will strengthen our capability to continue serving the community. The interest of an additional major corporation in open source scalable file systems is continuing proof of the importance of these systems to the computing community. It also demonstrates that OpenSFS continues to have a key role to play in the community as it held the Lustre community focused at a time of uncertainty and will prevent uncertainty in the future. We are very proud to see that our joint work is of interest to the larger HPC community and to an organization such as Intel.

Cray, DDN, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory founded OpenSFS in 2010. The founding members have since been joined by Xyratex Corp. at the Board Level and the Board is completed by our community representative Board Member from Indiana University. OpenSFS is very proud of the many participants who have joined at levels other than the board level.

OpenSFS is a California non-profit, mutual benefit corporation established to guarantee the continued availability of open source file systems for the high performance computing (HPC) community. Our current focus is the Lustre file system.

Operationally, OpenSFS gathers requirements from the community for file system enhancements and support and, using membership dues, awards contracts to organizations such as Whamcloud to provide the required enhancements and support. Support for OpenSFS has grown significantly over the past year as demonstrated by increased OpenSFS membership.

Quoting from the acquisition announcement issued by former Whamcloud management Brent Gorda, now Intel General Manager, High Performance Data Division, and Eric Barton, now Intel Lead Architect, High Performance Data Division:

“With the support of a thriving community, Lustre is quickly becoming the preferred solution. And, with the help of OpenSFS, we are continuing our commitment of supporting all vendors with a single tree to drive the growth of the Lustre ecosystem.“

OpenSFS will continue to work with the open source scalable file system community and with the Intel High Performance Data Division as well as other vendors to complete the enhancements and improved support the HPC community requires. We encourage all Lustre users to join OpenSFS and work with the community to ensure continued improvements.

Norman Morse
President/CEO, OpenSFS