Parallel NFS (pNFS) is a standard defined in NFSv4.1 that separates file metadata and data to allow parallel and distributed access to file data. It defines protocols for clients to communicate with a metadata server to get file layouts describing the data locations and protocols to access multiple data servers directly in parallel. However, it does not define protocols between metadata and data servers, allowing flexibility in implementation. pNFS supports various storage layout types including file, block, and object storage and can provide high performance parallel I/O while maintaining NFS semantics.