When NFS Becomes the Hidden Bottleneck in HPC Clusters

Most HPC organizations make storage decisions based on cluster size rather than workload characteristics, leading to either over-provisioning or performance failures. I/O concurrency, metadata pressure, and data access patterns—not node count—determine whether NFS suffices or parallel systems like Lustre become essential. Understanding these technical factors is critical for avoiding hidden bottlenecks that silently degrade research productivity.