Validation tools for IBM Cloud Paks

Run the storage readiness and performance suites on your IBM Storage Fusion environments. The suites run on OpenShift® Container Platform to evaluate the setup and performance of your storage setup.

Storage validation tool

Run the IBM Cloud Pak for Data storage validation tool on your Red Hat® OpenShift cluster to verify your storage setup for use with IBM Cloud Pak for Data. Set up your environment and before you install your IBM Cloud Paks, run the validation tool. For more information about the tool, see storage validation tool.

Performance validation tool

Run the storage performance tool to ensure that your storage performs properly and you meet the recommended performance guidelines. Collect Storage performance metrics on your Red Hat OpenShift cluster. For more information about the tool, see k8s-storage-perf GitHub repository.

As a prerequisite to run storage performance suite, run the following command to install selinux:

pip install selinux

The tool validates whether your performance (for example, network, environment) runs at a speed that enables IBM Cloud Paks to run successfully.

An example of the output:

Summary                      
Cluster Name                 PVC               Storage Type  Environment  Test Name   Thread Count  write MiB/s          Requirement
storage-performance-cluster  pvc-sysbench-rwo  Scale           HCI     rndwr_4k_8        8             46.4         Recommended to meet the requirement of 11 MiB/s or higher
storage-performance-cluster  pvc-sysbench-rwx  Scale           HCI     seqwr_1g_2        2             3766.0       Recommended to meet the requirement of 128 MiB/s or higher
storage-performance-cluster  pvc-sysbench-rwo  Scale           HCI     seqwr_1g_2        2             3901.2       Recommended to meet the requirement of 128 MiB/s or higher
storage-performance-cluster  pvc-sysbench-rwx  Scale           HCI     rndwr_4k_8        8             46.1         Recommended to meet the requirement of 11 MiB/s or higher

Here, the PVCs are running against the tests. The thread count specifies the number of simultaneous requests. The write Mb/s indicates the output.

Example of the partial output (from the "all" full metrics run) of a minimum IBM Storage Fusion HCI System configuration, that is, for a smallest environment. Depending on your configuration, environment, and network speed, the output would vary.

The screenshot shows an example of the partial output of a minimum configuration in excel format

Here, the cluster name is storage-performance-cluster of storage type ocs. The Summary section of the table also includes the requirement recommendations. In this example, for the rndwr_4k_8 test, the write MiB/s is 46.4 and the recommended is 11 MiB/s or higher. In all the rows, the output is either 2X or more than 2X of the recommendation. It helps you validate whether your environment meets the recommended performance requirements for IBM Cloud Paks.

You can use this feature regardless of IBM Cloud Paks.

IBM Cloud Pak for Data sizing in the Sales Configurator

The starting point is a minimum IBM Cloud Pak for Data configuration. If you select services from the list for inclusion, it shows the minimum required configuration. For example, it displays the number of compute nodes, resource pools, and memory to deploy. It also lists the dependencies. For example, if you want to use Watson OpenScale, then you need Watson Machine Learning, Common Core Services, and Analytics Engine Powered by Apache Spark.

Note: Ensure that the IBM Storage Fusion/storage sizing are also considered in your IBM Cloud Pak for Data sizing.

To view the sales configurator, go to https://app.ibmsalesconfigurator.com/#/zen/configure.