IBM Storage Scale Erasure Code Edition installation prerequisites

IBM Storage Scale Erasure Code Edition requires several software packages in addition to the base operating system.

Before you install IBM Storage Scale Erasure Code Edition, your network must pass the latency network KPIs for Ethernet networks to support RDMA network on x86_64.
Note: In IBM Storage Scale Erasure Code Edition, customers are required to meet the following network and storage KPI metrics before an installation is completed. For more information, see Network requirements and precheck and Disk requirements and precheck. Also, you must verify that the hardware that is planned for IBM Storage Scale Erasure Code Edition storage servers meets the minimum requirements. For more information, see Minimum hardware requirements and precheck. The installation toolkit would also verify that your hardware meets minimum requirements, but it is useful to execute this tool before you begin the installation.
The following RPMs are required to be installed1:
  • sg3_utils
  • nvme-cli
  • storcli (if you use SAS drives with LSI HBA)
  • perccli (if you use SAS drives with DELL RAID controller)
  • dmidecode (x86_64 only)
  • PyYAML
  • Sqlite
Note: To use IBM Storage Scale Erasure Code Edition 5.1.0 and later releases on RHEL 7.*, install PyYAML for python3 by using one of the following two methods:
  • Method 1: Using the pip3 command:
    pip3 install pyyaml
  • Method 2: Download the package and install it:
    1. Download the PyYAML package from http://pyyaml.org/download/pyyaml/PyYAML-5.3.1.tar.gz.
    2. Extract the package in a directory and issue the following command from that directory.
      python3 setup.py --without-libyaml install
Furthermore, it is important to ensure that you have the latest version of Mellanox OFED installed on each x86_64 node. Likewise, the driver versions must be maintained at a consistent level across all nodes.
Note: All IBM Storage Scale cluster software and configuration prerequisites must also be satisfied. For more information, see Installation prerequisites in IBM Storage Scale: Concepts, Planning, and Installation Guide.

IBM Storage Scale Erasure Code Edition precheck

IBM Storage Scale Erasure Code Edition precheck is integrated with the installation toolkit installation, deployment, or upgrade precheck. For IBM Storage Scale Erasure Code Edition, the precheck includes the following on all scale-out nodes:
  • Check whether the CPU requirements are met.
  • Check whether the memory requirements are met.
  • Check whether the OS is supported.
  • Check whether the networking requirements that include the required NIC and SAS adapters are met.
  • Check whether the required syscall parameters are set correctly.

Installation toolkit-related prerequisites

  • Ensure that networking is set up in one of the following ways.
    • DNS is configured such that all hostnames, either short or long, are resolvable.
    • All hostnames are resolvable in the /etc/hosts file. The host entries in the /etc/hosts file must be in the following order:

      <IP address> <Fully qualified domain name> <Short name>

  • Passwordless SSH must be set up using the FQDN and the short name of the node.

For more information, see Preparing to use the installation toolkit in IBM Storage Scale: Concepts, Planning, and Installation Guide.

Installation toolkit-related limitations

  • The installation toolkit is not supported in a sudo wrapper environment. Therefore, sudo wrappers cannot be used for installation, deployment, or upgrade of IBM Storage Scale Erasure Code Edition. After installation, deployment, or upgrade, you can use sudo wrappers for administration tasks in an IBM Storage Scale Erasure Code Edition environment.

    For more information, see Limitations of the installation toolkit in IBM Storage Scale: Concepts, Planning, and Installation Guide.

  • The installation toolkit does not support advanced parameters of vdisk sets and file systems that can be specified by using the mmvdisk command. After recovery groups are created, you can use the mmvdisk command to create vdisk sets and file systems with the advanced configuration parameters. Thereafter, you can use the installation toolkit deployment operation for protocol deployment.
  • The installation toolkit can be used to add new nodes to an existing IBM Storage Scale Erasure Code Edition cluster. But, the installation toolkit cannot be used for adding the new node into the existing recovery group. Use the mmvdisk command instead for adding new nodes into the existing recovery group.
  • The installation toolkit cannot accept multiple recovery groups as an argument while you define a vdisk set. If you want to specify more than one recovery group with the vdisk set, use the mmvdisk command after the installation phase is completed.
  • The installation toolkit does not support the creation of hybrid clusters (IBM Spectrum® Scale + ESS + IBM Storage Scale Erasure Code Edition).
  • The installation toolkit cannot be used to configure the recovery group servers. If you want to change the default settings for pagepool, vdisk space, or map memory, use the mmvdisk command after the recovery groups are created.