Description of the SUT used with Part 2

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For Part 2, the SUT was based upon multiple ECM nodes (whereas for Part 1 it was based upon a single ECM node). The Part 2 SUT consisted of four ECM nodes that ran the ECM application pair IBM® FNP8 CPE and ICN for Linux™ on z Systems™ on each node. Both applications ran in a clustered WAS environment. More precisely, each application ran in its own WAS cluster.

Furthermore, the SUT included front-end and back-end server components such as:
  • IBM IHS as Web server
  • IBM ITDS as Directory Service Provider
  • IBM DB2® database server

The SUT followed a 3-tier architecture model, enabling client components to interact with data resources and legacy applications, with logical tiers distributed across independent systems.

Figure 1. How the ECM system was configured for Spectrum Scale Shared Disk

This graphic provides an overview of how the ECM system was configured for Spectrum Scale Shared Disk
The SUT was implemented in a single IBM z Systems™ server Logical Partition (LPAR) that runs a z/VM® hypervisor for a virtualized environment.
  • ICN and FNP8 CPE were each deployed in their own multiple-node WAS clusters.
  • The FileNet® Advanced File Storage Area was 600 GiB large and resided on Spectrum Scale as parallel filesystem.
  • In the course of the study two Spectrum Scale cluster configurations were considered:
    • Shared Disk
    • Network Shared Disk

The Spectrum Scale cluster configuration SD specifies that SAN filesystem disks were directly attached to all ECM nodes that mount the filesystem. In respect of the SUT, the four ECM nodes were directly attached to the FileNet Advanced Storage Area disks.

Components of the ICN application were mapped to the Web server IHS. IHS was used to manage the HTTP traffic for ICN and did the request balancing for the multiple ECM WAS node setup.

The WAS clusters, the WebSphere® Deployment Manager (Dmgr), and IHS together formed a WebSphere Deployment Cell.

The DB2 ECM database server maintained three different databases:
  • An FNP8 CPE Object Store database.
  • An FNP8 Global Configuration Data (GCD) database.
  • An ICN database.

The ITDS Directory Service Provider provided authentication methods for usernames and passwords for the ECM system.

For guest-to-guest communication a z/VM Virtual Switch (VSWITCH) was used that also provided LAN access via a 10GbE OSA-Express® network card.

The load generator for ICN was a x86_64 machine running the IBM Rational® Performance Tester (RPT) application with a custom workload. The x86_64 machine was connected over a 10GbE network to the IBM z Systems server.

Figure 2 shows a similar SUT layout to that of Figure 1. The only difference is the Spectrum Scale cluster configuration. Now the cluster configuration NSD was used, which means that the filesystem disks for the FileNet File Storage Area were connected over the network to the ECM nodes. Three additional lightweight Spectrum Scale nodes were newly introduced which had the Spectrum Scale filesystem disks for the FileNet File Storage Area directly attached. These additional nodes were so called dedicated Spectrum Scale NSD servers that did the disk I/O for the ECM application nodes. The four ECM nodes were considered as NSD clients in the NSD cluster configuration and performed the network block I/O to the NSD servers.

The NSD cluster configuration is also important for widely dispersed Spectrum Scale nodes, which have no direct SAN access. This important Spectrum Scale cluster configuration was also considered in this case study.

Figure 2. How the SUT was configured for Spectrum Scale Network Shared Disk

This graphic shows how the SUT was configured for Spectrum Scale Network Shared Disk (NSD).