Sharing Spectrum Archive by using NFS on a Linux system

How to share IBM Spectrum Archive™ on a Linux system.

Before you begin

Note: IBM Spectrum Archive Library Edition for Windows does not support file sharing by using NFS.

About this task

Beginning with version 2.1.2, IBM Spectrum Archive Library Edition for Linux allows users to share Spectrum Archive by using the Network File System (NFS). IBM Spectrum Archive Library Edition for Linux is implemented with File system in Userspace (FUSE), which is a kernel module that provides functions for a user space program to be able to implement a fully functional file system.

File sharing by using NFS requires the -o noforget option when you mount a library. For more information, see Mounting a library by using the ltfs or ltfs.exe command.

Procedure

Complete the following steps to export an Spectrum Archive medium by using NFS on a Linux system.

Stop the NFS server.
Configure the NFS server to export the Spectrum Archive mount point.
Mount Spectrum Archive to the mount point as shown in the following example:
```
ltfs -o devname=/dev/IBMtape0 -o noforget [mount point]
```
Notes:
- The opt option is required to resolve inode and file by using NFS.
- The sync time must not be close or many indexes are written. It is recommended that you use the default setting of 5 minutes. For more information, see Sync operation.
Start the NFS server.
Mount the exported Spectrum Archive mount point in the NFS clients with the hard and intr options.
Note: By default, a Windows client mounts the NFS server with the soft option, which might cause a timeout. In this case, it is recommended that you use the hard option to mount. For example, use the mount command with the o mtype=hard option.
Access the exported Spectrum Archive mount point from the NFS client.
Unmount the exported Spectrum Archive mount point from all NFS clients.
Stop the NFS server.
Unmount Spectrum Archive.

Results

It is possible that requests from the NFS clients might be out of order. In this case, Spectrum Archive might return an error if multiple operations are run against the same file in a short time, even if the requests are serialized in the NFS clients.