Planning for protocols

This topic describes the planning considerations for using protocols.

Some protocol use considerations:
  • At the time of release, several features in GPFS are not explicitly tested with protocol functionality. Explicitly not tested features are Local Read Only Cache, Multi-cluster, Encryption, File Placement Optimizer, and Hierarchical Storage Management. They are expected to work with protocols and are tested with protocols over time. However, if you use one of these features before IBM® claims support of it, ensure that it is tested with the expected workloads before putting into production.

    For protocol support on remote clusters, see Using NFS/SMB protocol over remote cluster mounts.

  • Use of Clustered NFS (CNFS) is not compatible with use of Clustered Export Service (CES). You must choose one or the other. CNFS (which uses kernel NFS, a different NFS stack than the stack used by the CES infrastructure) continues to be supported; however, if you choose CNFS, you cannot take advantage of the integration of SMB and Object server functionality. If you choose to migrate from CNFS to CES, the CES infrastructure does not support a complete equivalent of CNFS group feature to control failover of IP addresses.
  • For more information about specific limitations about protocols and their integration with GPFS, see the IBM Storage Scale FAQ in IBM Documentation and IBM Storage Scale in IBM Documentation.