Data Foundation

The service provides a foundational data layer for applications to function and interact with data in a simplified, consistent, and scalable manner.

Before you begin

  • If you already have an installation of IBM Storage Fusion Data Foundation cluster or Red Hat® OpenShift® Data Foundation cluster, then the IBM Storage Fusion UI automatically discovers it. However, in the Data Foundation page, you can only view the Usable capacity, Health, and information about the storage nodes.
  • If you have a Rook-Ceph operator, then contact IBM Support for the expected behavior.
  • You can use a maximum of nine storage devices per node. The high number of storage devices leads to a higher recovery time during the loss of a node. This recommendation ensures that nodes stay below the cloud provider dynamic storage device attachment limits, and limits the recovery time after node failure with local storage devices.

    It is recommended to add nodes in the multiple of three, each of them in different failure domains.

    For deployments having three failure domains, you can scale up the storage by adding disks in the multiple of three, with the same number of disks coming from nodes in each of the failure domains.

  • Run following steps to ensure that there is no previously installed IBM Storage Fusion Data Foundation, Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation, OpenShift Container Storage, or Rook-Ceph in this OpenShift cluster before you enable the IBM Storage Fusion Data Foundation service:

    1. Verify that the namespace openshift-storage does not exist.
    2. Run the following command to confirm that no resources exist: 
      oc get storagecluster -A; oc get cephcluster -A
    3. Run the following command to confirm that none of the nodes have a IBM Storage Fusion Data Foundation storage label or Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation storage label: 
      oc get node -l cluster.ocs.openshift.io/openshift-storage=
  • Infrastructure nodes
    Ensure that the following prerequisites are met:
    • For infrastructure requirements, see Infrastructure requirements of IBM Storage Fusion Data Foundation.
    • For IBM Storage Fusion Data Foundation resource requirements, see ODF sizer tool. For common IBM Storage Fusion Data Foundation components per instance requirements of CPU and Memory, see Resource requirements.
    • If you want to deploy IBM Storage Fusion Data Foundation in an Infra node, make sure the worker node label exists.
      oc get node -l "node-role.kubernetes.io/worker="
    • Ensure that there are no taints in the infra or compute nodes that are used as storage nodes.

About this task

  • Both Data Foundation service and Global Data Platform service can coexist during the following scenarios:
    • Deploy Data Foundation service without dedicated mode.
    • Deploy Data Foundation in dedicated mode first, and then deploy Global Data Platform service.
  • For Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation deployed outside of IBM Storage Fusion, you cannot add nodes or capacity from IBM Storage Fusion. See Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation Scaling storage document.
  • Data Foundation service supports three storage device types: Local, Dynamic, External. Only one device type can be used for Data Foundation service in an OpenShift Container Platform. The following table shows supported platforms and which device types are supported in each platform.
    Platform Support
    VMware Local, dynamic, and external device
    Bare Metal Local and external device
    Linux on IBM zSystems Local device
    IBM Power Systems Local and external device
    ROKS on IBM Cloud (ROKS on VPC and Classic Bare Metal) Cloud-managed IBM Storage Fusion Data Foundation service. For the procedure to install, see Understanding IBM Storage Fusion Data Foundation.
    Self managed OpenShift Container Platform on Microsoft Azure Dynamic storage class
    Self managed OpenShift Container Platform on Amazon Web Services Dynamic storage class
  • For IBM Storage Fusion services and platform support matrix, see IBM Storage Fusion Services support matrix.

Procedure

  1. Go to Services page in IBM Storage Fusion user interface.
  2. In the Available section, click the Data Foundation tile.
  3. In the Data Foundation page, go through the details about the service and click Install.
  4. In the Install service window, select the Device type. The available options can be Local, Dynamic, or External based on which option is supported on your platform.
  5. Choose whether to enable Automatic updates and click Install.
    Note: If you select Automatic updates, then IBM Storage Fusion auto upgrades IBM Storage Fusion Data Foundation version.

    This upgrades IBM Storage Fusion Data Foundation service within the subscription channel like 4.10.x to 4.10.y, and across the subscription channel like 4.10.x to 4.11.y. However, it does not auto convert Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation to IBM Storage Fusion Data Foundation.

    For the procedure to upgrade Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation 4.10 to IBM Storage Fusion Data Foundation 4.12, see Upgrading Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation 4.10 to IBM Storage Fusion Data Foundation 4.12.

    The IBM Storage Fusion Data Foundation operator starts to deploy and you can see Data Foundation in the Available section of the Services page. Initially, the status shows as Installing and progress of the installation is mentioned in percentage. After successful completion of the installation, the status changes to Running. A Data Foundation page is added to the menu.
  6. To validate the installation, do the following steps in OpenShift Container Platform web console:
    • Go to Installed Operators to check whether the IBM Storage Fusion Data Foundation operator is listed and Status shows as Succeeded.
    • Additionally, if the installed platform is Bare Metal, Linux on IBM zSystems, or VMware using local device, check whether the Local Storage operators is installed and its status shows as Succeeded.
  7. Verify the IBM Storage Fusion Data Foundation service installation.
    1. To verify the installation of IBM Storage Fusion Data Foundation on IBM Storage Fusion, perform the checks specified in Verify the IBM Storage Fusion Data Foundation.
    2. Additionally, run the command to verify that IBM Storage Fusion Data Foundation service is installed successfully: 
      oc describe odfmanager/odfmanager -n <Fusionns>

      Update <Fusions> with your namespace value.

    Table 1. Install states IBM Storage Fusion Data Foundation service
    Install State Description
    Installing IBM Storage Fusion Data Foundation installation is ongoing, and there are no errors yet.
    Failing There is an installation error but IBM Storage Fusion retries to install IBM Storage Fusion Data Foundation. If the problem is solved, this status changes to Installing or Comleted.
    Completed IBM Storage Fusion Data Foundation installation completed successfully.
    Table 2. Upgrade states IBM Storage Fusion Data Foundation service
    Upgrade State Description
    Not started IBM Storage Fusion Data Foundation upgrade has not started yet.
    Upgrading IBM Storage Fusion Data Foundation upgrade is ongoing, and there are no errors yet.
    Failing There is an installation error but IBM Storage Fusion retries to upgrade IBM Storage Fusion Data Foundation. If the problem is solved, this status changes to Upgrading or Completed.
    Completed IBM Storage Fusion Data Foundation upgrade completed successfully.
    Table 3. Health states IBM Storage Fusion Data Foundation service
    State Description
    Installing IBM Storage Fusion Data Foundation installation is ongoing. For more information about installation status details, see Table 1.
    Upgrading IBM Storage Fusion Data Foundation upgrade is ongoing. For more information about upgrading status details, see Table 2.
    Healthy IBM Storage Fusion Data Foundation installation completed successfully and the service is in normal state.
    Degraded IBM Storage Fusion Data Foundation installation completed successfully but the service is not in normal state.

What to do next

Configure storage in your environment. Provision the amount of usable capacity that your environment needs and select the nodes to run the Data Foundation workloads. For more information about the configuration, see Configuring Data Foundation storage. Optionally, you also setup encryption to use an external Key Management System. For the procedure to set up encryption, see Preparing to connect to an external KMS server in IBM Storage Fusion Data Foundation.
Note: You can view the Usable capacity and Health for an externally discovered IBM Storage Fusion Data Foundation but cannot configure storage.