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The Spectrum Scale stretched cluster architecture is a highly-available parallel file system "stretched" across two data centers or sites. We call this an active-active configuration, because applications may access the same data sets from either site, concurrently, and enjoy file system consistency. You can learn about this architecture from the Expert Talk podcast I gave … Continue reading Best Practices for building a stretched cluster with Spectrum Scale

Previously I wrote about IBM's Spectrum Scale Developer Edition. To get the code, you start by navigating to https://www.ibm.com/products/scale-out-file-and-object-storage. Spectrum Scale product page Click on the "Try free developer edition" button near the top. This will lead you to a form to either create an IBM account or log in using your existing "IBMid": If … Continue reading Getting started with Spectrum Scale Developer Edition – Downloading

IBM Spectrum Scale is a flexible parallel file system, but that flexibility comes at the price of some complexity. The well-designed command line interface and product consistency go a long way to mitigate that complexity, but it still takes time to master a technology as sophisticated as a parallel file system. Wouldn't it be nice … Continue reading IBM Spectrum Scale Developer Edition

When a node starts running Spectrum Scale, the -A attribute of each Spectrum Scale file system is checked to determine whether or not the file system should be mounted. File systems configured with -A yes will automatically be mounted when the node starts Spectrum Scale. File systems configured with -A automount will be mounted when the file … Continue reading Controlling what Spectrum Scale file systems are mounted on a node

Spectrum Scale uses several logical networks for its communication.We use the term logical network to make clear that these are functions that may or may not use different physical networks, depending on configuration. Spectrum Scale daemon and administrative networks Daemon interface and network The Spectrum Scale daemon, mmfsd, runs on every active Spectrum Scale node, … Continue reading Types of networks in Spectrum Scale

There are multiple ways to use Spectrum Scale to prepare for disaster and help with recovery. An application is said to be active/passive if it runs only on a primary site with a particular data set, and only runs on a secondary site with that data set if the primary site is down. Active/passive configurations … Continue reading Disaster Recovery planning and Spectrum Scale

This is a talk I did for the "Accelerate with IBM Storage" webinar on Spectrum Scale's Active File Management (AFM) capability.

When GPFS was first developed, RAID storage was not commonplace. To protect data, a file system could be configured so that each piece of data could be have a replica written to a second location. Over time, this mechanism was extended so that data could also be written to a third location. Functionally, there is … Continue reading Failure groups in Spectrum Scale

All disks in Spectrum Scale have a few pieces of information at fixed positions: Sector 1 is the "File System unique ID". This will be matched in the file system descriptor to a Spectrum Scale disk name, and is written to the disk when it is added to the file system with mmcrfs, mmadddisk, or … Continue reading File System Descriptor Quorum in Spectrum Scale

There are a few ways to install Spectrum Scale on a cluster. Since version 4.1.1, when Spectrum Scale introduced protocol nodes, the software bundle has included a toolkit to help with installation. Over time, this toolkit has improved considerably -- but it takes a bit of finessing to get an environment ready for the toolkit. … Continue reading Manually installing Spectrum Scale software on Red Hat