Network considerations for Cloud services
This topic describes the network considerations that you need to follow for installing Cloud services on your IBM Spectrum Scale™ cluster.
- Network Time Protocol (NTP) must be correctly set on all nodes where the Cloud services are installed. If correct date and time are not set, some of the cloud storage providers will refuse to authenticate your requests.
- Cloud services always use the GPFS™ cluster (daemon) network and not the CES network.
Cloud storage supports storing cold data on a public cloud object storage service, such as IBM® Softlayer or Amazon S3. When using a public cloud, the connection is over a WAN.
Cloud services for both Transparent cloud tiering and Cloud data Sharing can consume a considerable amount of WAN bandwidth. Customers need to ensure that there is sufficient WAN bandwidth for migrations and recalls along with any other WAN usage that they might require. When Cloud services run, an administrator can monitor WAN usage and other running processes in the IBM Spectrum Scale performance monitor. For a list of metrics, see the Cloud services section in the List of performance metrics topic.
To avoid any conflict of Cloud services I/O traffic and internal IBM Spectrum Scale cluster I/O traffic, it is recommended that the Cloud services node is configured with two or more NICs. One NIC card is designated as the target for all inter-cluster I/O, and the other one is designated for Cloud services I/O traffic.
After the NIC card is set up and connected to the WAN, it is recommended to run any external network speed test, such as speedtest.net, to ensure that the I/O bandwidth to the external network meets your expectations.
If customers choose to configure a private cloud instance, they need to ensure that there is sufficient bandwidth between the IBM Spectrum Scale cluster and the private cloud to support migrating and recalling files. It is preferred to have a 10 GB network for higher throughput.