Adding expansion racks

You can expand your IBM Fusion HCI with an additional rack. You only need as few as one node, along with the necessary switches, to add the rack successfully.

1. From the IBM Fusion HCI menu, click Infrastructure > Overview.
2. Click Add rack.
   The Add rack wizard page is displayed.
3. In the Getting started wizard page, go through the details and click Next to initiate the discovery process.
4. In the Discovery wizard page, wait for the rack discovery to complete.
   In this page, IBM Fusion HCI enables expansion of rack, connects to the provisioned node, and discovers rack data.
   Errors might occur during the discovery step because of the following reasons:
   • Unable to establish connection to the provisioned node on the new rack. To resolve this issue, revisit your DNS configuration and retry.

   There are Retry and Cancel options on this page. If the discovery fails, it can be retried by clicking retry and if you wish to cancel, click Cancel.

5. Choose a zone from the Availability zone drop-down list.
6. Click Next.
7. In the Validation wizard page, check whether all the nodes are validated properly.
   The IBM Fusion HCI validates the configuration of each node as a preparatory step so as to join the cluster. You need as few as one node, along with the necessary switches to add the rack successfully.

   This page continuously shows the number of nodes that are successfully validated. If the validation does not complete within the stipulated time, the validation operation fails and message corresponding to that gets displayed.

   If issues exist, then check your connections or fix problematic nodes and retry. You cannot proceed with errors, so click Save & Quit. Click Collect logs to download and view logs.

   In this page, if rack addition fails with the following error message, then contact IBM Support:

   Rack import timedout

   The Retry on this page refreshes the node validation status.

8. If the session is lost during the add rack operation, do the following steps:
   1. Log in to IBM Fusion HCI user interface.
   2. Go to Infrastructure > Nodes.

      A Scale out operation not completed notification is displayed on the page.

   3. Click Resume process link in the Scale out operation not completed notification.

      Use Resume process to continue the add rack operation from where you left off.

      For any errors in rack addition due to timedout issues, go to the Infrastructure > Nodes > Discovered nodes tab page to know more details.

9. Click Next.
   The optional Node selection wizard page is displayed.
10. Optionally, in the Node selection wizard page, you can open the Edit node selection and edit node assignments.
    By default, IBM Fusion HCI automatically configures all nodes in the rack. The Edit node selection shows a table where you can deselect nodes. If you do not deselect, then the nodes get added automatically to the OpenShift® cluster. Your deselection depends on the amount of nodes required for your storage building block. For example, you have twenty nodes and six nodes are required for storage building block. The table displays only the remaining fourteen nodes. Also, a summary section is displayed with the following details:

    • Nodes
    • CPUs
    • Memory (GB)
    • Usable capacity (TiB)

    The values of the summary section changes dynamically based on your selection and deselection.
11. Click Next.
    The Finish wizard page is displayed.
12. In Finish wizard page, click Finish to close the Add rack wizard.

    The IBM Fusion HCI adds these nodes to the OpenShift cluster. After the add rack operation is complete, the user interface shows auxiliary rack related nodes in the Discovered node tab. To add more racks, click Actions > Add rack again and follow the steps mentioned in this procedure.

13. Select nodes and click Add to cluster.
    The IBM Fusion HCI starts to add nodes to the OpenShift cluster.