Service node task commands

Service node task (sntask) commands are used during the initial installation of IBM Storage Virtualize for Public Cloud software onto an IBM Cloud® bare metal server or Amazon Web Services (AWS) container and afterward to manage the IBM Storage Virtualize for Public Cloud node on the bare metal server or AWS container. For example, you might start the node with sntask startnode and stop the node with sntask stopnode. On IBM Cloud, the sntask commands and service node information (sninfo) commands reside and run as terminal commands on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux® 7 operating system of the bare metal server. On AWS, the sntask commands and service node information (sninfo) commands reside and run as terminal commands on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 or later operating system of the EC2 instances.

The sntask and sninfo commands are installed as part of the package that is installed during the automatic or manual installation. The installation also creates the user (sv_cloud) for running the commands. The task commands gather information that is required to load the software and configure and manage the IBM Storage Virtualize for Public Cloud node. The sninfo commands output information about the nonce and the status of the installed IBM Storage Virtualize for Public Cloud node.

To use the sntask and sninfo commands, ssh to the bare metal server as the sv_cloud user. Log in with an SSH key, if possible, or with the sv_cloud password if you did not yet create and install an SSH key pair. Set the initial password for the sv_cloud user from the root user if the password is not yet set.

# passwd sv_cloud

To create the SSH key pair, refer to the RHEL man pages for a description of how to use the ssh-keygen -t rsa terminal command. To create the key pair from a Microsoft Windows system, use the puttygen.exe utility, as described in the PuTTY documentation.

To bypass the default session time limit for the SSH session, use ssh with the TCPKeepAlive option:


$ ssh server_name -l sv_cloud -o TCPKeepAlive=yes

You are prompted for the password if you are not using an SSH key. To change the sv_cloud password when a password exists, use the sv_cloud user to run the following terminal command:


$ passwd sv_cloud

You can now run sntask and sninfo commands.