Setting up the installer node

The first step in using the installation toolkit for installing IBM Spectrum Scale™ and deploying protocols is to configure your installer node.

A good candidate for your installer node is the GPFS™ admin node, because a prerequisite of this node is that it must be able to communicate with all other nodes without the need to provide a password. Also, SSH connections between the admin node and all other nodes must be set up to suppress prompting. Therefore, no prompts should exist when using ssh among any cluster nodes to and from each other, and to and from the server.

First, find the installation toolkit by changing directories to where it was extracted (the default extraction path for 5.0.1.0 is as follows. This path varies depending on the code level).

cd /usr/lpp/mmfs/5.0.1.0/installer

To configure the installer node, issue the following command:

./spectrumscale setup -s InstallNodeIP -i SSHIdentity

The -s argument identifies the IP that nodes will use to retrieve their configuration. This IP will be one associated with a device on the installer node. (This is automatically validated during the setup phase.)

Optionally, you can specify a private SSH key to be used to communicate with nodes in the cluster definition file, using the -i argument.

In an Elastic Storage Server (ESS) cluster, if you want to use the installation toolkit to install GPFS and deploy protocols you must specify the setup type as ess while setting up the installer node as follows.

./spectrumscale setup -s InstallNodeIP -i SSHIdentity -st ess

For more information, see ESS awareness with the installation toolkit.

As part of the setup process, the appropriate Chef packages will be deployed on the installer node.