Creating NSDs and file systems as part of installing IBM Storage Scale on Linux systems

Create NSDS and file systems for installing IBM Storage Scale on supported Linux® distributions as follows:

1. Create NSDs as follows:
   1. Identify available physical disks in the /dev directory.
   2. Create the NSD stanza file to be used with the mmcrnsd command.

      For example, consider you have 2 disks, /dev/sdc and /dev/sdd, and your node name is exnode1 and it is running Linux. In this case, your NSD stanza file contents are similar to the following:

      %nsd:
      			device=/dev/sdc
      			nsd=nsd1
      			servers=exnode1
      			usage=dataAndMetadata 
      			failureGroup=-1 
      			pool=system 
      %nsd:
      			device=/dev/sdd
      			nsd=nsd2
      			servers=exnode1
      			usage=dataAndMetadata 
      			failureGroup=-1 

      Note: The server name used in the NSD stanza file must be resolvable by the system.
   3. Create the NSDs by using the following command:

      # mmcrnsd –F NSD_Stanza_Filename

2. Create a GPFS file system using the following command:

   # mmcrfs fs1 -F NSD_Stanza_Filename -k nfs4

   Attention: When creating NSD stanza files ensure that you plan out the required file system layout. This includes number of file systems, pools in each file system, failure group layout, metadata versus data usage types, as well as other mmcrnsd and mmcrnsd stanzafile parameters. Additionally, a stanzafile created for NSD creation by using the mmcrnsd command, can also be used for file system creation through the mmcrfs command. If you are using an NSD stanzafile for file system creation then you must be aware that a single file system is created. If you require multiple file systems, then you must create a separate stanzafile for each file system.