Option 3: Deploying IBM Spectrum Scale on an existing Amazon VPC

The following requirements must be met for IBM Spectrum Scale™ to be deployed on an existing VPC.

  • One private and one public network per availability zone. A minimum of two availability zones are required, so two private and two public subnets are needed.
  • Private subnet requirements:
    1. Internet gateway (IGW) is not configured in the route table.
    2. Auto-assign public IPv4 address is disabled. The IBM Spectrum Scale nodes with public IP are not supported due to security issues.
    3. Configure the Network Address Translation (NAT) for this subnet. The IBM Spectrum Scale stack creation requires access to AWS S3 and RHUI servers.
  • Public subnets are required for bastion nodes. It is recommended to use Amazon templates to create bastion nodes. The IBM Spectrum Scale stack creation does not have any requirement for public subnets.
    Note: It is recommended to use the following:
    1. Dedicated private subnet for the IBM Spectrum Scale cluster
    2. Subnet masks that are large enough to support maximum number of nodes
    3. Same subnet mask for all private subnets
    4. Subnets that are not defined as default subnet
  • Create an S3 endpoint. An S3 endpoint is created by the CF template for VPC that is being used to create VPC.
  • VPC endpoints must be created and added to the route tab.
Note: The VPC created by the template has the value for DNS hostname set to Yes. The DNS hostname value is set to No when a new VPC is created. For more information on DNS hostnames, see https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonVPC/latest/UserGuide/vpc-dns.html#vpc-dns-hostnames.
Table 1. File System Configurations
Parameter label (name) Default Description
Block Size (BlockSize) 4M The file system block size. You can choose a value from 256 KiB to 16MiB.
GPFS™ Mount Point(GpfsMountPoint) /gpfs/fs1 The mount point for the IBM Spectrum Scale volume.
Table 2. NSD Configurations
Parameter label (name) Default Description
EBS Type (EBSType) gp2 The EBS volume type for IBM Spectrum Scale storage attached to each NSD server node. Options are: General Purpose SSD (gp2), Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1), Cold HDD (sc1), Throughput Optimized HDD (st1), and EBS Magnetic (standard). For more information about EBS volume type choices, see Amazon EBS.
Disk Per Node (DiskPerNode) 1 The number of NSD volumes to attach to each NSD server node. You can choose 1-15 disks.
Disk Size (DiskSize) 500 The disk size of NSD volume(s) attached to each NSD server node, in GiBs. Supported disk sizes are 10-16,384 GiB.
Table 3. Server Node Configurations
Parameter label (name) Default Description
Server Node Count (ServerNodeCount) 2 The number of EC2 instances to launch for the NSD server on the GPFS cluster. You can select 2-64 instances.
Server Instance Type(ServerInstanceType) t2.medium The instance type to use for the NSD server node instances.
Table 4. Compute Node Configurations
Parameter label (name) Default Description
Compute Node Count (ComputeNodeCount) 2 The number of IBM Spectrum Scale compute node instances. You can select 1-64 instances.
Compute Instance Type (ComputeInstanceType) t2.medium

The instance type to use for the compute node instances.

Table 5. Network Configuration
Parameter label (name) Default Description
Availability Zone (AvailabilityZones) requires input The list of Availability Zones to use for the subnets in the VPC. Only two Availability Zones are used for this deployment, and the logical order of your selections is preserved.
VPC CIDR(VPCCIDR 10.0.0.0/16 The CIDR block for the VPC.
Private Subnet 1 CIDR (PrivateSubnet1CIDR) 10.0.1.0/24 The CIDR block for the private subnet located in Availability Zone 1.
Private Subnet 2 CIDR (PrivateSubnet2CIDR) 10.0.3.0/24 The CIDR block for the private subnet located in Availability Zone 2.
Public Subnet 1 CIDR (PublicSubnet1CIDR) 10.0.0.0/24 The CIDR block for the public subnet located in Availability Zone 1.
Public Subnet 2 CIDR (PublicSubnet2CIDR) 10.0.2.0/24 The CIDR block for the public subnet located in Availability Zone 2.
Allowed External Access CIDR (RemoteAccessCIDR) requires input The CIDR block that is allowed external SSH access to the bastion hosts, e.g., x.x.x.x/16-28. It is recommended that you set this value to a trusted CIDR block. For example, you might want to restrict access to your corporate network.
Table 6. Amazon EC2 Configuration
Parameter label (name) Default Description
Key Pair Name (KeyPairName) requires input A public/private key pair, which allows you to connect securely to your instance after it launches. When you created an AWS account, this is the key pair you created in your preferred region.
Bastion AMI OS (BastionAMIOS) Amazon-Linux- HVM The Linux distribution for the AMI to be used for the bastion host instances. If you choose CentOS, make sure that you have a subscription to the CentOS AMI in AWS Marketplace..
Bastion Instance Type (BastionInstanceType) t2.micro TheEC2 instance type for the bastion host instances.
Table 7. Personal Configuration
Parameter label (name) Default Description
Spectrum S3 Bucket (SpectrumS3Bucket) requires input An optional parameter that defines the S3 bucket name used for shared object storage among IBM Spectrum Scale nodes. An IAM role is set up to allow read/write operations on the specified bucket. You can provide the name of a pre-existing bucket you own or specify the name of a new bucket to create.
Operator Email (OperatorEmail) requires input The email address to which notifications of any scaling operations is sent to.
Table 8. License Information
Parameter label (name) Default Description
License Agreement Terms (LicenseAgreementTerms) requires input Review the licensing terms at Licence Information, and if you agree to the terms, choose Accept.