Software requirements

IBM Storage Scale planning includes understanding the latest software requirements.

Note: This topic lists the additional software requirements to use specific functions after successful installation. It does not list the dependencies for installing IBM Storage Scale packages.
  • GPFS is supported on AIX®, Linux®, and Windows.
  • Kernel development files and compiler utilities are required to build the GPFS portability layer on Linux nodes. The required RPMs or packages for each supported Linux distribution are as follows:
    • Red Hat Enterprise Linux RPMs
      • kernel-devel
      • cpp
      • gcc
      • gcc-c++
      • binutils
      • elfutils-libelf-devel (Required for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.x)
    • SLES Linux RPMs
      • kernel-default-devel
      • cpp
      • gcc
      • gcc-c++
      • binutils
      • libelf-devel
    • Ubuntu Linux packages
      • linux-generic
      • cpp
      • gcc
      • g++
      • binutils
      • libelf-dev

Software requirements for specific IBM Storage Scale functions

Additional software requirements to use specific functions after successful installation are as follows.
Required package for active file management (AFM)
nfs-utils

Required packages for Cluster Export Services (CES) and CNFS
  • ethtool
  • nfs-utils (on Ubuntu: nfs-common)
  • rpcbind
  • psmisc
  • iputils (on Ubuntu: iputils-arping)
  • ifupdown (only on Ubuntu; there is no additional package requirement for RHEL/SLES)
  • Start of changepython36-dbus (only on RHEL 7.9)
    Remember:
    • The python36-dbus package is not part of the official RHEL repository, it is part of the Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL). You must manually download the python36-dbus package from the EPEL repository and install it.
    • The python36-dbus package is not part of the IBM Storage Scale repositories because it is not part of RHEL itself.
    • The python36-dbus RPM is not included in the IBM Storage Scale Systems packages.
    End of change
Note: On a Linux node that is not a protocol node running the NFS service, it is recommended to disable the port mapper service (also called rpcbind).

Required package for SLES 15 CES nodes
gdb

Requirements for file authentication

Before configuring file authentication, ensure that prerequisites are met to avoid installation failure. For more information, see Configuring authentication and ID mapping for file access.

You can use Active Directory (AD) authentication. For more information, see Integrating with AD server.

You can use LDAP authentication. For more information, see Integrating with LDAP server.

Required packages as per OS and Authentication schemes
[ad:RHEL]="bind-utils"
[ad:SLES]="bind-utils libarchive13"
[ad:UBUNTU]="dnsutils"

[ldap:RHEL]="openldap-clients sssd sssd-tools"
[ldap:SLES]="openldap2-client sssd sssd-tools sssd-ldap"
[ldap:UBUNTU]="ldap-utils sssd sssd-tools"

[nis:RHEL]="sssd ypbind sssd-proxy"
[nis:SLES]="sssd ypbind sssd-proxy"
[nis:UBUNTU]="sssd nis sssd-proxy"

[kerberos:RHEL]="krb5-workstation"
[kerberos:SLES]="krb5-client sssd-krb5"
[kerberos:UBUNTU]="krb5-user"
Start of changeRequired packages for the performance monitoring toolEnd of change
Start of changePerformance monitoring pmcollector package requirements for the boost regular expression and sqlite3 shared libraries are distro-specific. The name of the library package divers between distros.
  • RHEL 7: libsqlite3x
  • RHEL 8 and 9: sqlite-libs
  • SLES 15: libsqlite3-0
  • UBUNTU 20.04 and 22.04: libsqlite3-0
    Important: Ensure that these packages are installed on the system before the installation of the performance monitoring tool.
End of change
Required package for the IBM Storage Scale monitoring service on AIX and Linux
  • Python 3
    Note:
    • If you are using a RHEL operating system, downloading, installing, or setting Python >=3.12 as the default path causes issues. The latest version of Python may cause failures in the installation toolkit operations because RHEL operating systems do not usually work with the latest version of Python. For more information, see Preparing to use the installation toolkit and Limitations of the installation toolkit.
    • On Linux, Python 3 is usually installed automatically.
    • Python 3 is shipped with AIX 7.3.

      On AIX 7.2, you must manually install Python 3.0 or later. For more information, see AIX Toolbox for Linux Applications. To manually install, one of the ways is to configure Yum with the AIX toolbox. For more information, see Configuring YUM and creating local repositories on IBM AIX.

    • On Windows, manually install Python 3 under the Cygwin environment as described in the following steps. Windows native (non-Cygwin) distributions of Python 3 are not supported.
      1. From http://www.cygwin.com, download and run the Cygwin 64-bit setup program setup-x86_64.exe.
      2. In the Select Packages window, click View > Category.
      3. Click All > Python > Python3 and select the latest level.
      4. Follow the instructions to complete the installation.
IBM Storage Scale 5.2.x supports Python 3.8 or later. It is recommended that Python 3.8 is installed through the OS package manager (For example, yum install python3). If you install Python 3.8 by other means, then unexpected results might occur, such as failure to install gpfs.base for prerequisite checks, and workarounds might be required.
Requirements for the management GUI
The following packages must be installed on the node on which GUI needs to be installed:
  • PostgreSQL server including contrib package. The PostgreSQL server must be specific to the Linux distribution.
  • IBM Storage Scale Java™ Runtime Environment (JRE) (gpfs.java RPM).
  • IBM Storage Scale performance collector (gpfs.pmcollector RPM).
  • OpenSSL for HTTPS certificate management.
  • gpfs.gskit to use CCR.
Required packages for clustered watch folder
Every node that is mounting the watched file system must have the following packages installed:
  • For RHEL, the librdkafka package requires the openssl-devel and cyrus-sasl-devel packages.
  • For Ubuntu, the librdkafka package requires the libssl-dev and libsasl2-dev packages.
  • librdkafka (gpfs.librdkafka rpm/package).
For more information, see Requirements, limitations, and support for clustered watch folder.

Required package to use the mmchconfig numaMemoryInterleave parameter
numactl

Required package to use the mmhealth command on Ubuntu Linux
sqlite3

Required packages for mmprotocoltrace

Some of the advanced tracing components of the mmprotocoltrace command require specific packages to be installed on all nodes that need to participate in tracing related operations.

  • To enable network tracing with mmprotocoltrace, you need to install the tcpdump package.
  • To enable the syscalls-tracing for SMB, you need to install the strace package.

Prerequisites for the installation toolkit

For information on prerequisites for using the installation toolkit, see Preparing to use the installation toolkit.

For additional prerequisites on Linux, see Installation prerequisites.

Consult the IBM Storage Scale FAQ in IBM® Documentation for the latest list of:
  • AIX environments
  • Linux distributions
  • Linux kernel versions
  • Windows environments