A parallel file system is a software component designed to store data across multiple networked servers and to facilitate high-performance access through simultaneous, coordinated input/output operations (IOPS) between clients and storage nodes.

A parallel file system breaks up a data set and distributes, or stripes, the blocks to multiple storage drives, which can be located in local and/or remote servers. Users do not need to know the physical location of the data blocks to retrieve a file. The system uses a global namespace to facilitate data access. Parallel file systems often use a metadata server to store information about the data, such as the file name, location and owner.

A parallel file system reads and writes data to distributed storage devices using multiple I/O paths concurrently, as part of one or more processes of a computer program. The coordinated use of multiple I/O paths can provide a significant performance benefit, especially when streaming workloads that involve a large number of clients.

Capacity and bandwidth can be scaled to accommodate enormous quantities of data. Storage features may include high availability, mirroring, replication and snapshots.