Hardware requirements for Cloud services

You must meet certain hardware requirements to be able to install and use Cloud services on the IBM Storage Scale cluster.

For running Cloud services, adhere to the recommended CPU and memory requirements for a CES node even when installing Cloud services on an NSD node. For more information, see the IBM Spectrum® Scale FAQ in IBM® Documentation.

The hardware requirements for Cloud services are:

Any standard x86 64-bit servers or Power® Linux® nodes that run supported Linux distributions.
The minimum size that is required for the /var/MCStore folder is 12 GB.

Note: For better performance, it is recommended to have a minimum of 2 CPU socket server of the latest Intel variety with at least 128 GB of memory.

A high CPU count promotes better cloud tiering throughput because although object storage can be slow in I/O operations per thread, object storage can support many threads. Use sixteen or more CPUs when you select your hardware.

Cloud tiering services demand a large amount of memory, which is why the minimum recommended memory size is 128 GB. Memory size requirements increase if the number of files increases, as you add files on the cloud means you must increase the memory that is on your system. For larger deployments, it is recommended that you use 10 - 20 times as much memory that is required so the Cloud services can cache its directory database data.