GPFS limitations on Windows

GPFS for Windows supports most of the GPFS features that are available on AIX® and Linux®, but some limitations apply.

The following limitations apply to configuring and operating a file system on a Windows node:
  • File systems must have been created with GPFS 3.1.2.5 or later.
  • You cannot upgrade an existing file system that was created with GPFS 3.1 or earlier.
The remaining GPFS for Windows limitations apply only to the Windows nodes in a cluster:
  • The following GPFS commands are not supported on Windows:
    • mmafm* commands
    • mmapplypolicy
    • mmaudit* commands
    • mmbackup
    • mmbackupconfig, mmrestoreconfig
    • mmcall* commands
    • mmcdp* commands
    • mmces* commands
    • mmcheckquota, mmdefedquota, mmedquota, mmlsquota, mmrepquota, mmsetquota
    • mmclone
    • mmcloud* commands
    • mmdelacl, mmeditacl
    • mmhadoop* commands
    • mmhealth
    • mmimgbackup, mmimgrestore
    • mmkeyserv
    • mmnetverify
    • mmnfs* commands
    • mmperfmon, mmpmon
    • mmrestorefs
    • mmsed
    • mmsmb* commands
    • mmsnmp* commands
    • mmsysmon* commands
    • mmuserauth
    • spectrumscale
    • All GNR commands
  • The GPFS Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are not supported on Windows.
  • The native Windows backup utility is not supported.
  • Symbolic links that are created on UNIX-based nodes are specially handled by GPFS Windows nodes; they appear as regular files with a size of 0 and their contents cannot be accessed or modified.
  • GPFS on Windows nodes attempts to preserve data integrity between memory-mapped I/O and other forms of I/O on the same computation node. However, if the same file is memory mapped on more than one Windows node, data coherency is not guaranteed between the memory-mapped sections on these multiple nodes. In other words, GPFS on Windows does not provide distributed shared memory semantics. Therefore, applications that require data coherency between memory-mapped files on more than one node might not function as expected.
  • GPFS Windows compute nodes are not supported in AFM clusters.