Using NFS/SMB protocol over remote cluster mounts

IBM Spectrum Scale allows you to create NFS and SMB exports on remotely mounted file systems.

The following diagram shows the high-level flow of this feature.

This allows you to separate the tasks performed by each cluster. Storage cluster owns the file systems and the storage. Protocol clusters contain the protocol node that provides access to the remotely mounted file system through NFS or SMB. In this configuration, each cluster is managed independently. For more information, see Important information about remote access.

Here, the storage cluster owns a file system and the protocol cluster remotely mounts the file system. The protocol nodes (CES nodes) in the protocol cluster export the file system via SMB and NFS.

You can define one set of protocol nodes per cluster, using multiple independent protocol clusters which remotely mount file systems. Protocol clusters can share access to a storage cluster but not to a file system. Each protocol cluster requires a dedicated file system. Each protocol cluster can have a different authentication configuration, thus allowing different authentication domains while keeping the data at a central location. Another benefit is the ability to access existing ESS-based file systems through NFS or SMB without adding nodes to the ESS cluster.