The IBM Spectrum Scale™ GUI provides an easy way to configure, manage, and monitor various features that are available with the IBM Spectrum Scale™ system. Along with flexibility and simplicity, certain unique characteristics of GUI also help both experienced and new IBM Spectrum Scale™ users.

How does the IBM Spectrum Scale GUI help the new users?

It is easier for a new user to learn about IBM Spectrum Scale system through GUI. It allows you to view the existing configuration of the system and explore the capabilities of IBM Spectrum Scale by browsing through different pages of the GUI. The help page that is available in the help menu of each page explains the concepts and options that are associated with the respective GUI page. The IBM Spectrum Scale GUI node also provides infrastructure for management APIs. You can use them to automate certain operations or to integrate IBM Spectrum Scale in a larger environment.

How can an experienced user make use of the GUI?

Many administrators master the extensive CLI to configure, monitor, and manage the IBM Spectrum Scale clusters. The management GUI is also expanding its horizons with a growing set of supported and unique capabilities. The following list provides some of the key features of GUI:

• The IBM Spectrum Scale GUI is a web-based application that runs on common web browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, and Edge. No client-side installation is required to use the GUI.


• The IBM Spectrum Scale GUI supports managing and monitoring a single cluster. It is possible to have up to three GUI nodes in a cluster to ensure high-availability.


• Supports role-based access model, which is not present in the CLI. Different roles are available to limit access to certain functions: from a read-only monitor role to a security administrator with full access on all GUI functions. GUI users are disparate from the Operating System users.


• The IBM Spectrum Scale system comes with extensive capabilities to collect performance and capacity data. The GUI allows you in-context access to this data in both graphical and tabular formats.


• The health monitoring component in the IBM Spectrum Scale system using mmhealth command is integrated with GUI and it provides health status of services and components at the cluster level. You can also configure event notifications, which allow to notify the user when certain system health events occur in the system.

IBM Spectrum Scale features supported in GUI

The following figure shows the Home page of the IBM Spectrum Scale GUI. You can access the individual GUI pages from the navigation menu that is available on the left side of the GUI page.

Figure 1. Home page of the IBM Spectrum Scale GUI

Note: The default user name and password to access the IBM Spectrum Scale management GUI are admin and admin001 respectively.

You can perform the following important tasks through the IBM Spectrum Scale GUI:

• Monitor the performance of the system based on various aspects


• Monitor system health


• Manage file systems


• Create filesets
  


• Create, manage, and schedule snapshots


• Create rules and policies for information lifecycle management


• Monitor active file management


• Monitor storage pools


• Monitor NSDs


• Manage SMB service and SMB shares


• Manage NFS service and NFS exports


• Display and modify NFSv4ACL for files and directories


• Create users and define roles for the GUI users


• Create object users and defining roles for them


• Define default, user, group, and fileset quotas


• Monitor the capacity details at various levels such as file system, pools, filesets, users, and user groups


• Configure event notifications through emails or SNMP


• Collect diagnostic data to find the root cause and troubleshoot an issue reported in the system.


• Monitor events and tips


• Perform directed maintenance procedures to fix certain issues or to optimize the system


• Monitor transparent cloud tiering service


• Manage object storage, create object users and roles

Reference

For information on the IBM Spectrum Scale management GUI features, see IBM Spectrum Scale GUI.

Acknowledgement

Markus Rohwedder – IBM Spectrum Scale GUI architect

Stefan Roth – IBM Spectrum Scale GUI developer