Create a Managed Lustre instance

A Google Cloud Managed Lustre instance is a complete Lustre file system in the cloud. It can be mounted to a Compute Engine VM or to a Kubernetes Engine cluster. You access data on the instance using standard POSIX terminology.

When creating a Managed Lustre instance, you must define the following properties:

  • The instance's name, used by Google Cloud.
  • The file system name, used by client-side tools such as lfs.
  • The storage capacity in gibibytes (GiB). Capacity can range from 18000 GiB to 936000 GiB, in multiples of 9000. For example, 18000, 27000, 36000, etc.
  • The location. For best performance, locate your instance in the same zone as your client VMs or GKE cluster.
  • The VPC network for this instance. This must be the same network as used for your VMs or clusters.
  • Whether this instance will be accessed from a Kubernetes Engine (GKE) cluster. Because both Lustre and GKE use port 988 by default, this setting changes the Lustre port to avoid conflicts.

Required permissions

To create a new Managed Lustre instance, you must have Managed Lustre Admin (roles/lustre.admin) IAM permissions for your project.

See Access control with IAM for details.

You must also have enabled the Managed Lustre API.

Create an instance

You can create a new Managed Lustre instance from the following interfaces.

gcloud

To create a new Managed Lustre instance, use the gcloud lustre instances create command:

gcloud lustre instances create INSTANCE_ID \
  --capacity-gib=CAPACITY_GIB \
  --filesystem=FILESYSTEM \
  --location=LOCATION \
  --network=NETWORK_PATH \
  --async

The following values must be specified:

  • INSTANCE_ID is the name of this Managed Lustre instance. It must:

    • Contain only lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens.
    • Start with a letter.
    • Be between 1-63 characters.
    • End with a number or a letter.
    • Be unique within the project and location.

  • --capacity-gib is the storage capacity of the instance in gibibytes (GiB). Allowed values are from 18000 to 936000, in multiples of 9000.

  • --filesystem is the name to assign to this Lustre file system. This name is used by client-side commands, including mount and lfs. It must be 8 characters or less in length, can only contain letters and/or numbers, and is case-sensitive.

    It is recommended to choose a name that is unique across all Managed Lustre instances in the VPC. This allows multiple instances to be used from a single GKE node.

  • --location must be a valid Google Cloud zone that is supported by Managed Lustre. See Supported locations for a full list.

  • --network is the full path of the VPC network to which the instance belongs, in the format projects/PROJECT_ID/global/networks/NETWORK. See Configure a VPC network.

  • --project is your Google Cloud project ID.

Optional flags are:

  • --gke-support-enabled creates an instance that can be used by Google Kubernetes Engine clusters. It sets the Lustre LNet accept_port to 6988.

    To connect from a Compute Engine VM when --gke-support-enabled is specified, you must update the LNet configuration file on the VM. See Configure LNet for gke-support-enabled instances.

  • --async (optional) runs the command asynchronously. Instead of waiting for instance creation to complete, Google Cloud CLI returns an operation ID that can be used to query the command's status.

A successful request returns an operation ID:

Create request issued for: [$INSTANCE_ID]
Waiting for operation [projects/$PROJECT_ID/locations/us-central1-a/operations/
operation-1234567890-609d21deae6f0-befaf0bc-867b1aa1] to complete...

Instance creation takes approximately 30 minutes for an instance with 18000 GiB capacity, up to 3 hours for an instance with 936000 GiB capacity. See Query instance creation status for instructions on checking the status of your request.

REST

To create an instance using the REST API, send a request to the following endpoint:

POST https://lustre.googleapis.com/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/ZONE/instances?instanceId=INSTANCE_NAME
Authorization: Bearer AUTH_TOKEN
{
  "filesystem": string,
  "capacityGib": string,
  "network": string,
  "gkeSupportEnabled": boolean
}

The following values must be specified:

  • PROJECT_ID is your Google Cloud project ID.

  • ZONE must be a valid Google Cloud zone that is supported by Managed Lustre. See Supported locations for a full list.

  • INSTANCE_NAME is the name of this Managed Lustre instance. It must:

    • Contain only lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens.
    • Start with a letter.
    • Be between 1-63 characters.
    • End with a number or a letter.
    • Be unique within the project and location.

  • filesystem is the name to assign to this Lustre file system. This name is used by client-side commands, including mount and lfs. It must be 8 characters or less in length, can only contain letters and/or numbers, and is case-sensitive.

    It is recommended to choose a file system name that is unique across all Managed Lustre instances in the VPC. This allows multiple instances to be used from a single GKE node.

  • capacityGib is the storage capacity of the instance in gibibytes (GiB). Allowed values are from 18000 to 936000, in multiples of 9000.

  • network is the full path of the VPC network to which the instance belongs, in the format projects/PROJECT_ID/global/networks/NETWORK. See Configure a VPC network.

  • gkeSupportEnabled specifies that this instance may be used by Google Kubernetes Engine clusters. It sets the Lustre LNet accept_port to 6988.

    To connect from a Compute Engine VM when gkeSupportEnabled is specified, you must update the LNet configuration file on the VM. See Configure LNet for gke-support-enabled instances.

The API supports additional optional fields for instances. See the Instance resource reference documentation for a full list and descriptions.

Google Cloud console

  1. Go to the Managed Lustre page in the Google Cloud console.

    Go to Managed Lustre

  2. Click Create. The Create an instance page is displayed.

  3. Enter a unique Instance name and, optionally, a description. The instance name is used by Google Cloud to identify this instance.

  4. Enter a Filesystem name. This is the name that is used by client-side tools such as lfs. It must be 8 characters or less in length, can only contain letters and/or numbers, and is case-sensitive.

  5. Select a region and zone in which to create this instance. You should place your instance in the same region and zone as the Compute Engine VMs or Google Kubernetes Engine clusters that will connect to it.

  6. Specify the storage capacity in gibibytes (GiB) of your instance. Valid values are from 18000 to 936000 in multiples of 9000.

  7. If you'll connect to this instance from a GKE cluster, select Enable GKE support. This option sets the Lustre LNet accept_port to 6988.

    To connect from a Compute Engine VM when Enable GKE support is specified, you must update the LNet configuration file on the VM. See Configure LNet for gke-support-enabled instances.

  8. Select the Network that you created in Create a VPC network.

The Summary section of the page updates to show a cost estimate based on your selections.

Click Submit to continue. The instance creation process takes from 30 minutes to 3 hours, depending on the instance size.

Query instance creation status

You can query the status of a create request from the following interfaces.

gcloud

To query the status of a create operation, you can get either the operation or the instance.

To get the instance:

gcloud lustre instances describe INSTANCE_NAME \
  --location=ZONE

The creation status is the value of state.

To get the operation, use the operation ID from the instance creation response. The operation ID has the following format:

  • operation-1234567890123-6127783ad26ea-88913969-02748053
gcloud lustre operations describe OPERATION_ID \
  --location=LOCATION

The creation status is the value of done.

When the instance has been created, the result of a get request on the instance is similar to the following response.

Note the IP address in the mountPoint field and your file system name; you'll need these values when mounting your instance.

capacityGib: '27000'
createTime: '2025-03-14T00:07:34.308574307Z'
filesystem: lustre-fs
mountPoint: 10.115.0.3@tcp:/testfs
name: projects/$PROJECT/locations/us-central1-a/instances/$INSTANCE_NAME
network: projects/$PROJECT/global/networks/default
state: ACTIVE
updateTime: '2025-03-14T00:15:37.101024263Z'

REST

To query the status of a create operation, use the operation ID from the response. The operation ID has the following format:

  • operation-1234567890123-6127783ad26ea-88913969-02748053

Send a request to the following endpoint:

GET https://lustre.googleapis.com/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/ZONE/operations/OPERATION_ID
Authorization: Bearer

If successful, the response body contains an instance of Operation.

Google Cloud console

  1. Go to the Managed Lustre page in the Google Cloud console.

    Go to Managed Lustre

  2. Click the instance name in the list. The Instance Details page appears, which includes the current status of your instance creation request.

What's next