What's new

Streamlined setup

During the installation of IBM Storage Fusion HCI System, you can now choose which version of Red Hat OpenShift to use. It provides the flexibility that you need, and removes the need to go through Red Hat OpenShift upgrades immediately after the installation.

New generation of compute-only and compute-storage nodes

IBM Storage Fusion HCI System gets a boost with new server models. The new 9155-C10 (32c) and 9155-C14 (64c) servers are built around the latest Intel Sapphire Rapids CPUs, providing 17.5% lower power consumption, PCIe Gen 5, and DDR5 memory. For more information about the comparison, see link to comparison. Even the OS boot drives get a boost with M.2 NVMe drives that gets your nodes back online in no time. For storage, you now have the 3.84 TB or 7.68 TB NVMe drive options, meaning you can now build an appliance with a smaller storage footprint. To know more about the hardware, see Compute-only and compute-storage server model servers.

Convert compute nodes into AFM nodes

The previous generation of IBM Storage Fusion HCI System had the need for a 9155-F01 server for using the Active file management (AFM) feature that enables functionality like Regional DR, watsonx.data storage acceleration, and other Global Data Platform scenarios. Furthermore, AFM servers were restricted to slots ru23 and ru24 in IBM Storage Fusion HCI System racks. Now, you can use any 9155-C10 (32c) or the 9155-C14 (64c) compute servers for AFM, meaning that you do not have to order specialized hardware to take advantage of AFM. Just label the node and IBM Storage Fusion HCI System automatically reserves it for the AFM use. For more information about the conversion procedure, see Converting compute node to AFM node.

Remote mount filesystem

In 2.8, you can enable applications on IBM Storage Fusion HCI System to access storage on remote IBM Storage Scale/ESS file systems. This allows workloads running on OpenShift to access existing data sets already stored on existing file systems. It also enables a central storage hub provided by Storage Scale/ESS to provide storage for multiple Fusion HCI clusters. For more information about how to access a remote filesystem, see Accessing remote IBM Storage Scale storage cluster in IBM Storage Fusion.

New recipes for Backup & Restore

Real enterprise applications go well beyond a single `Deployment` and one persistent volume. They may include operators, span multiple namespaces, and require application data consistency across dozens of persistent volumes. Fusion recipes eliminate the need for multi-page backup run-books by orchestrating backups of even the most complex applications, and doing it all while the application is online. This release includes new recipes for applications, including IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps.

Backup & Restore hardening and serviceability improvements

Backup block-mode PVCs (Technical preview)

IBM Storage Fusion adds support for block-mode persistent volumes. This complements the existing capabilities for backing up file-mode VMs. Now, you can backup OpenShift VMs regardless of how they access storage. Support for backing up block-mode persistent volumes support applies to any application workload; not just VMs. For more information about block-mode PVCs in IBM Storage Fusion, see Backup & Restore Block PVC Technical preview.

Harvesters data ingestion for NFS in Data Cataloging

The 2.8 version introduces harvesters as a new strategy for rapid ingestion of NFS distributed data sources and data tagging. This novel way to accelerate the data ingestion on distributed NFS data sources feature allows data cataloging users to take advantage of new entities called harvesters to perform remote data scans and ingestion out of the cluster.

IBM Db2 upgrade in Data Cataloging

The new IBM Db2 11.5.9 version is supported in Data Cataloging service of IBM Storage Fusion 2.8.0. This new version provides security fixes, defects correction, improvements to high availability and performance, and other updates. For more information about IBM Db2, see What's new in Db2 11.5.9.

Data Cataloging hardening

• Different Data Cataloging security fixes and defect corrections
• Supports the new AMQ Streams 2.6 version
• Includes log trimmer improvements

Install

Monitoring

Monitoring IBM Storage Fusion HCI System hardware just got easier, with the introduction of graphical views for nodes and switches. Renderings of the front, back, and inside the hardware allows you to easily spot which components need attention, and confidently identify which parts need to be serviced.

Upgrade

Upgrades just got easier with built in pre-checks that automatically validate the health of the appliance, network, Red Hat OpenShift, and IBM Storage Fusion services. Whether you upgrade Red Hat OpenShift, appliance firmware, or IBM Storage Fusion services, the environment is ready for you to proceed. During upgrade, you can easily monitor each step, with a clear understanding of what is in progress. If anything gets stuck, a new guided workflow shows you what needs your attention and guides you with the resolution.

Quay repository

Previously, our support was exclusive to JFrog Artifactory for enterprise registry purposes. However, beginning with version 2.8.0, users now have the option to utilize the Quay repository as well.