Storage

IBM Fusion offers a variety of storage options to meet the demands of high-performance workloads and fulfill the storage needs of virtual machines.

Fusion storage services

Depending on your workload requirements, choose between either of the following services:

Fusion Data Foundation storage is optimized for container workload management, ensuring efficient orchestration and resource allocation.
Global Data Platform, on the other hand, is designed for complex AI processing, providing enhanced computational power and scalability.

Fusion Data Foundation

Fusion Data Foundation is designed to provide persistent storage and cluster data management. It supports containerized environments and integrates seamlessly with Red Hat® OpenShift®. It supports file, block, and object storage, and provides a consistent storage experience across hybrid cloud environments. For more information about Fusion Data Foundation service, see Fusion Data Foundation.

Object Storage: Multi-Cloud Gateway (MCG) is a highly customizable data gateway for object storage. It defines resources by using Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs), and provides data services such as caching, tiering, mirroring, deduplication, encryption, and compression over many storage resources including private and public cloud object storage, file systems, and container PV/PVC. IBM Fusion supports MCG through Fusion Data Foundation. You can install MCG from the Services page of IBM Fusion. For more information about how to manage and work with MCG, see Managing hybrid and multicloud resource.

Global Data Platform

Global Data Platform is a clustered file system that provides concurrent access to a single file system or set of file systems from multiple nodes. The nodes can be SAN-attached, network-attached, a mixture of SAN-attached and network-attached, or in a shared-nothing cluster configuration. This enables high-performance access to this common set of data to support a scale-out solution or to provide a high availability platform. The IBM Storage Scale storage is designed for building a global data platform for AI, high-performance computing (HPC), advanced analytics, and other demanding workloads. It supports file and object storage for unstructured data. For more information about Global Data Platform service, see Global Data Platform. For more information about IBM Storage Scale service, see IBM Storage Scale documentation.

Object Storage: Multi-Cloud Gateway (MCG) in Global Data Platform is an on-prem deployment. If the Global Data Platform ECE is installed, then you can see the MCG tile for it.

Global Data Platform Remote Mount

The Global Data Platform remote mount enables you to connect to a remote IBM Storage Scale cluster as if it were part of your local cluster. This is particularly useful for distributed workloads and hybrid cloud environments. For more information about, see Remote IBM Storage Scale storage cluster in IBM Fusion.

On Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.20 or earlier and Fusion Data Foundation 4.20 or earlier, Fusion Data Foundation and the Global Data Platform remote mount service can be installed independently.

Starting with Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.21 and Fusion Data Foundation 4.21 or later, install Fusion Data Foundation first. After installation, the Global Data Platform remote mount tile becomes available for configuration.

If you install Fusion Data Foundation as local storage, you must explicitly install and configure the remote mount service by using the Global Data Platform remote mount service tile. If you install Global Data Platform as local storage, the remote mount capability is available by default.

IBM Storage Ceph

When you install Fusion Data Foundation, you can connect or configure the Fusion Data Foundation with an external IBM Storage Ceph cluster to use it as a storage provider. As you connect and manage additional storage resources, you can scale your storage infrastructure as needed.

IBM FlashSystem

When you install Fusion Data Foundation, you can connect or configure the Fusion Data Foundation with an external IBM FlashSystem cluster to use it as a storage provider. As you connect and manage additional storage resources, you can scale your storage infrastructure as needed.

Combining these storage options

The different storage installation combinations that you can do using these options, see Storage deployment combinations from the user interface.