IBM Storage Scale roles associated with deployed middleware

Virtual machines that are created at IBM Spectrum Scale deployment have a number of roles that are associated with the deployed middleware IBM Storage Scale services.

After the IBM Storage Scale Server virtual application pattern is deployed, a IBM Storage Scale Server virtual application instance is created. The IBM Storage Scale Server instance generates middleware services that provision a minimum of two virtual machines hosting the GPFS_Manager Tier component, the GPFSServerMain Tier component, and some number of GPFSServers Tier components.

The selection you make during pattern creation time or at deployment determines how many GPFSServer virtual machines are provisioned and what type of IBM Storage Scale Manager is deployed.

For IBM Storage Scale Server Primary, or Mirror configurations, the following middleware roles are associated with the virtual machines that are created:

GPFS_Manager: This role identifies the virtual machines that manage any IBM Storage Scale calls received from the IBM Storage Scale operations. It then routes these calls to the appropriate IBM Storage Scale Server.
GPFSServerMain: This role identifies the virtual machine that receives the IBM Storage Scale Manager commands. It is only deployed in a Primary or Mirror configuration. After deployment, you can designate other virtual machine as the main server that receives IBM Storage Scale Manager commands, so this virtual machine might not always behave as the main server.
GPFSServer: This role identifies regular IBM Storage Scale nodes. The number of IBM Storage Scale Server virtual machines is specified during deployment.

For IBM Storage Scale Server Tiebreak configurations, the following middleware roles are associated with the virtual machines that are created:

GPFS_ManagerTie: This role identifies the virtual machines that manage any IBM Storage Scale calls received from the IBM Storage Scale operations. It then routes these calls to the appropriate IBM Storage Scale Server.
GPFSTiebreak: This role identifies the virtual machine on which the IBM Storage Scale tiebreak component is installed. You deploy this type of virtual machine if you select the Tiebreak option on IBM Storage Scale Server deployment. It is used to route calls to the GPFSTiebreak virtual machine.

Before you deploy your IBM Storage Scale Server instance, ensure that the Cloud Pak System Software for Power® instance into which you are deploying has enough compute nodes to support deployment of your chosen configuration. Each IBM Storage Scale node (those with GPFSServerMain and GPFSServer roles) must run in a different compute node from each other. For example, if you deploy three IBM Storage Scale nodes, you must have at least three compute nodes available on the Cloud Pak System Software for Power instance.