IBM Cloud Satellite

This section answers questions related to IBM Cloud® Satellite in IBM Storage Fusion HCI System.

  1. Can IBM Cloud Satellite be leveraged on IBM Storage Fusion HCI System?
    Yes, IBM Storage Fusion HCI System can be used as a hardware platform for IBM Cloud Satellite.

  2. Can IBM Storage Fusion HCI System be an IBM Cloud Satellite?
    Yes, IBM Storage Fusion HCI System has a guided graphical experience that makes it easy to partition resources in the rack and configure them to host an IBM Cloud Satellite. A IBM Storage Fusion HCI System rack can also support the hosting of multiple Cloud Satellite hosts in the same rack.

  3. Is IBM Cloud Satellite mandatory when using IBM Storage Fusion HCI System?
    No, IBM Cloud Satellite is not mandatory.

  4. What is the storage used for IBM Cloud Satellite? Does it use the underlying IBM Storage Scale ECE or any other storage available in OpenShift®?
    By default, you can use IBM Storage Scale (remote mount) to access storage in the underlying IBM Storage Scale. However, use OCS/ODF (local mount) inside IBM Cloud Satellite.

  5. Is OpenShift Container Platform installed on IBM Storage Fusion HCI System before I create OpenShift clusters on IBM Cloud Satellite?
    The OpenShift Virtualization must to be installed before IBM Cloud Satellite operator installation. This means OpenShift Container Platform must be installed on IBM Storage Fusion HCI System before creating OpenShift clusters on IBM Cloud Satellite. Deploying IBM Cloud Satellite link- Deploying IBM Cloud Satellite hosts.

    Correct, the base IBM Storage Fusion HCI System OpenShift cluster on bare metal is always there. It serves as a virtualization layer for the RHEL 7 and RHEL 8 satellite hosts which are deployed on top of OpenShift Virtualization.

  6. Does creating OpenShift clusters on IBM Cloud Satellite influences IBM Storage Scale installation?
    The installation of IBM Storage Fusion HCI System automatically installs IBM Storage Scale. For IBM Cloud Satellite, the Satellite clusters running on top of IBM Storage Fusion HCI System can then do remote mount to consume storage from the IBM Storage Scale ECE installation on IBM Storage Fusion HCI System and do dynamic provisioning for workloads in IBM Cloud Satellite.

  7. Is there any restriction from performance points of view? When OpenShift Container Platform managed by IBM Cloud Satellite runs on VM that is on IBM Storage Fusion HCI System OpenShift Container Platform?
    The underlying technology for OpenShift Container Platform Virtualization is Red Hat's KVM, so it must be very similar operating and performance characteristics to running IBM Cloud Satellite on KVM (which should have good performance). The advantage here is you can manage the VMs just like pods/containers on the OpenShift Container Platform control plane (and IBM Storage Fusion HCI System makes it easy to deploy these IBM Cloud Satellite VMs).

  8. Do I need external Docker repository?
    Yes, external Docker repository is needed to load the Docker image that contains OVA related details. You have to create a secret for the external Docker registry, and at the time of deployment, the VM disk OVA gets downloaded from the external Docker registry.
  9. Which Cloud Pak for Data (CP4D) Services are currently certified to run on IBM Storage Fusion HCI System?

    All services in CP4D have been validated and certified with IBM Storage Fusion. For the list, see https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/cloud-paks/cp-data/4.5.x?topic=requirements-storage#compute-requirements__service-storage.