Simplified administration

IBM Storage Scale offers many of the standard file system interfaces for most applications to run without modification.

Operating system utilities complement the IBM Storage Scale utilities. Therefore, you can use familiar commands for routine file operations. For more information, see Considerations for GPFS applications.

IBM Storage Scale administration commands use names and functions that are similar to UNIX and Linux® file system commands with one important difference: the IBM Storage Scale commands operate on multiple nodes. A single IBM Storage Scale command can complete an administration function across the entire cluster. For more information on the individual commands, see Command reference.

IBM Storage Scale commands save configuration and file system information in one or more files. These files are called IBM Storage Scale cluster configuration data files. IBM Storage Scale maintains the consistency of its configuration files across the cluster, and this consistency provides accurate and consistent confirmation information. For more information, see Cluster configuration data files.