Introduction
IBM Storage Scale is a clustered file system that provides concurrent access to a single file system or set of file systems from multiple nodes. The nodes can be SAN-attached, network-attached, a mixture of SAN-attached and network-attached, or in a shared-nothing cluster configuration. This enables high-performance access to this common set of data to support a scale-out solution or to provide a high availability platform. Click here for more info.
In this blog we will go through the steps involved in deploying a IBM Storage Scale cluster using AWS Marketplace offering.
CloudFormation Template (CFT)
AWS CloudFormation templates are JSON or YAML-formatted text files that simplify provisioning and management on AWS. The templates describe the service or application architecture you want to deploy, and AWS CloudFormation uses those templates to provision and configure the required services. The deployed application and associated resources are called a "stack."
Below is a sample CFT to create an EC2 instance.
Delivery Options
IBM Storage Scale on AWS supports 3 delivery options.
- New VPC (Single-AZ)
- New VPC (Multi-AZ)
- Existing VPC
New VPC(Single-AZ)
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Launch a fully configured environment in a single Availability Zone with:
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A VPC including public/private subnets and an internet gateway
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Managed NAT gateways for private subnet internet access
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A bastion host (SSH access) in a public subnet, managed via an Auto Scaling group of 1
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IAM instance role with fine-grained permissions for deployment
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Suitable security groups for minimal protocol/port access
New VPC(Multi-AZ)
Deploy across two Availability Zones with high availability:
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A VPC with two public and two private subnets (configurable count)
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Internet gateway + managed NAT gateways
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Bastion host with SSH access, managed by Auto Scaling (1 instance)
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IAM role and security groups configured for deployment
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Only required ports (SSH, Spectrum Scale Daemon) are opened
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EC2 instances for NSD and compute roles, in Auto Scaling groups
Existing VPC
Deploy into a pre-existing multi-AZ VPC with:
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Required IAM instance role and security groups
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Minimal port exposure (SSH, Spectrum Scale Daemon)
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EC2 instances (NSD storage + compute), managed by Auto Scaling
mmcloudworkflow
The mmcloudworkflows utility is designed for lifecycle management of IBM Spectrum Scale clusters on AWS. Key operations include adding compute/storage nodes, removing compute nodes, and full cluster teardown.
- commands supported by mmcloudworkflow:
- mmcloudworkflows cluster info
- mmcloudworkflows cluster expand
- mmcloudworkflows cluster destroy
- mmcloudworkflows gui_service start
Examples:
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- To get the cluster info, run mmcloudworkflows cluster info.
mmcloudworkflows cluster info --stack_name <stack-name>
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- To add compute nodes, run mmcloudworkflows cluster expand.
mmcloudworkflows cluster expand --node_type compute|storage --num-instances N --stack_name <stack-name>
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- To start the GUI node, run mmcloudworkflows gui_service start.
mmcloudworkflows gui_service start --stack_name <stack-name>
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- To delete the entire cluster, run mmcloudworkflows cluster destroy.
mmcloudworkflows cluster destroy --stack_name <stack-name> [--force]
Support Info:
gpfs version: 5.2.2.0
AWS Marketplace version: BYOL 1.5
Refer this link for more info on supported features.
Click here to get started with creating your first cluster on AWS cloud.