Setting up a cloud services cluster

This topic provides step-by-step instructions for quickly setting up a cloud service node group that can support Transparent cloud tiering or Cloud data sharing on the IBM Spectrum Scale™ cluster.

In the multi-node setup, a maximum of 4 of any combination of CES or NSD nodes are supported as a cloud services node group -- a minimum of two are recommended for high availability. The node group is bound to a single file system. Data migration or recall workload is shared across all the nodes. During a transparent recall or migration, the ILM policy gathers a list of files to be migrated, and the list is divided equally among all the nodes.
Note: Start of changeOnce a multi-node setup is up and running, the Transparent cloud tiering GUI components will be available on the IBM Spectrum Scale GUI.End of change

Perform the following steps for setting up a cloud services cluster:

  1. Create a node class specifying the IP address of the individual nodes where the server packages are going to be installed. For more information, see Creating a user-defined node class for Transparent cloud tiering or Cloud data sharing.
  2. Install the required RPMs on the nodes that you identified. For more information, see Installing cloud services on IBM Spectrum Scale nodes.
  3. Designate the nodes where you installed the RPMs as cloud service nodes. For more information, see Designating the cloud services nodes.
  4. Start cloud services on all nodes. For more information, see Starting cloud services.
  5. Validate a cloud account. For more information, see Pre-validating the cloud account settings.
    Note: This step is optional.
  6. Associate an IBM Spectrum Scale file system with the cloud service nodes. For more information, see Associating a file system with cloud services nodes.
  7. Create a cloud account upon successful validation. For more information, see Creating a cloud storage account.
Now that a cloud service node group setup is ready, you need to decide if you are going to use the node group for Transparent cloud tiering or for Cloud data sharing.

If you are doing Transparent cloud tiering, do the following steps to verify that the cluster is ready for transparent recall/migration based on an ILM policy:

  • Create a sample policy, migrate.policy, and apply this policy by using the cloud services nodes by with the command: mmapplypolicy gpfs -P migrate.policy -N FirstCloud
    Note: If you have done the defaultHelperNodes settings, you need not specify the -N parameter to distribute workload here.
You can confirm that data migration is happening across multiple nodes by looking at the following events:
  • Each Transparent cloud tiering node will have policy files under /tmp.
  • Each Transparent cloud tiering node will start reflecting the migration metrics for the amount of data that is passed through it.
Note: Start of changeIf you change the IP address or network settings of any of the cloud services node once it is operational, do the following steps:
  1. Stop the cloud services (by using the mmcloudgateway service stop command), the way it is mandated to stop IBM Spectrum Scale services while changing the node IP address.
  2. To change the IP address, it is recommended to follow the steps provided in Changing IP addresses and host names.
End of change
Parent topic: Installing cloud services on IBM Spectrum Scale nodes