  Recent research on distributed storage systems (DSSs) has revealed
interesting connections between matroid theory and locally repairable codes
(LRCs). The goal of this chapter is to introduce the reader to matroids and
polymatroids, and illustrate their relation to distribute storage systems.
While many of the results are rather technical in nature, effort is made to
increase accessibility via simple examples. The chapter embeds all the
essential features of LRCs, namely locality, availability, and hierarchy
alongside with related generalised Singleton bounds.
