Installation steps

This topic describes the procedure for installing cloud services on IBM Storage Scale nodes.

cloud services creates the following folders after installation:
  • /var/MCStore
  • <filesystem>/.mcstore
  • /opt/ibm/MCStore
Do not make any changes to these folders in order to avoid any undesired results.
The cloud services RPMs are available with IBM Storage Scale Advanced Edition, IBM Storage Scale Data Management Edition, IBM Storage Scale Developer Edition, or IBM Storage Scale Erasure Code Edition. You can verify this by issuing this command: rpm -qa | grep gpfs.adv. Depending on the target Linux® distribution, the RPMs are available in the following paths where *_rpms or *_debs is the component specific directory:
  • Red Hat® Enterprise Linux 7.x: /usr/lpp/mmfs/5.0.x.x/*_rpms/rhel7
  • Ubuntu 16.04 LTS: /usr/lpp/mmfs/5.0.x.x/*_debs/ubuntu16
  • SLES 12: /usr/lpp/mmfs/5.0.x.x/*_rpms/sles12
With each build of IBM Storage Scale, two RPMs are available for cloud services:
  • gpfs.tct.server-x.x.x.x86_64.rpm. This is the server package that is installed on the cloud services nodes. These nodes must have outbound WAN connectivity to be able to support data migration between IBM Storage Scale cluster and the cloud object storage. When installed on non-cloud gateway nodes, files are recalled locally without routing the requests through the gateway nodes. To enable the client-assisted recall, you must run mmcloudgateway clientassist enable.
  • gpfs.tct.client-x.x.x.x86_64.rpm. This is the client package that contains the cloud services binary files (specifically the data manager commands). This package must be installed on all remaining cluster nodes to activate ILM-based file migration or file recall that is initiated from that node (every node in the cluster is safe). The client RPM is not required on the nodes where the server package is installed.
    Note: It is important to install the client package on every node so that files that are deleted from the IBM Storage Scale cluster are deleted efficiently from the cloud storage tier. If this package is not installed, files are deleted less aggressively and only as a result of running the reconcile service.
Note: For policy-based migrations, it is recommended that the file system manager node (rather all nodes with manager roles) is installed at least with the client RPM. This ensures that if any migration request goes to the file system manager node that is not a Transparent cloud tiering node, the request is forwarded to one of the server nodes in the node class, and the migration seamlessly takes place. If the RPM is not there on the file system manager, then migration fails. Transparent cloud tiering is needed on all clients (not just for migration requests) or transparent recall does not work properly and delete processing is not handled efficiently for files transferred to the cloud.
  1. Copy the server RPMs to the desired nodes.
  2. Install cloud services package on each node by issuing the following command depending on your architecture:
    rpm -ivh gpfs.tct.server-x.x.x.x86_64.rpm
    Note: By default, the cloud services is installed under the /opt/ibm/MCStore directory.
  3. Install the client package on the desired nodes by issuing the following command depending on your OS and architecture:
    • For SLES or Red Hat Enterprise Linux: rpm -ivh gpfs.tct.client-x.x.x.<arch>.rpm
    • For Ubuntu Linux: dpkg -i gpfs.tct.client-x.x.x.<arch>.deb
Next step: Designating the cloud services nodes