Introducing the GPFS Storage Server

This section describes the components, features, and operating specifications of the IBM® GPFS Storage Server (GSS).

The GPFS Storage Server is a high-performance, GPFS network storage disk (NSD) solution that is made up of one or more GSS building blocks.

Each GSS 2.0 building block contains the following hardware and software components:
  • IBM System x x3650 M4 servers
    • 128 GB of memory, with the option to upgrade to 256 GB
    • 2 x 300GB 6Gbps 10k rpm SAS hard disk drives (HDDs) for hosting the operating system
    • ServeRAID M5100 Series 1GB Flash/RAID 5 Upgrade for IBM System x (A1WY)
    • Networking options
      • Mellanox ConnectX-3 VPI Dual-port InfiniBand FDR / 40Gb Ethernet adapter (A2YF)
      • Mellanox ConnectX-3 non-VPI Dual-port 10Gb Ethernet adapter (A2ZQ)
      • LSI 9206-16e Quad-port 6Gbps SAS adapter (A3F2), with an additional LSI 9201-16e Quad-port 6Gbps SAS adapter as backup
      For information about adapter combinations and slot placements, see Server and network adapter configurations.
    • Operating system: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5
  • One of the following sets of NetApp disk enclosures:
    • NetApp DE6600 disk enclosures (60 drive slots)
      • 0796-011/HC1 (58 x 2 TB HDDs)
      • 0796-012/HC2 (58 x 2 TB HDDs) + (2 x 200GB SSDs)
      • 0796-013/HC3 (58 x 3 TB HDDs)
      • 0796-014/HC4 (58 x 3 TB HDDs) + (2 x 200GB SSDs)
      • 0796-015/HC5 (58 x 4 TB HDDs)
      • 0796-016/HC6 (58 x 4 TB HDDs) + (2 x 200GB SSDs)
    • NetApp DE5600 disk enclosures (24 drive slots)
      • 0796-017/HC7 (24 x 200GB 2.5-inch SSDs)
      • 0796-018/HC8 (24 x 800GB 2.5-inch SSDs)
      • 0796-019/HC9 (24 x 1.2TB 2.5-inch HDDs)
      • 0796-020/HCA (22 x 1.2TB 2.5-inch HDDs) + (2 x 200GB 2.5-inch SDDs)
  • IBM General Parallel File System (GPFS) 4.1.