Summary of changes

This topic summarizes changes to the IBM Spectrum Scale™ licensed program and the IBM Spectrum Scale library. Within each topic, these markers (Start of change End of change ) surrounding text or illustrations indicate technical changes or additions that are made to the previous edition of the information.

Start of change

Summary of changes
for IBM Spectrum Scale version 5.0.2
as updated, February 2019

This release of the IBM Spectrum Scale licensed program and the IBM Spectrum Scale library includes the following improvements. All improvements are available after an upgrade, unless otherwise specified.
AFM and AFM DR-related changes

Authentication-related changes
The --password, --ks-admin-pwd, and --ks-swift-pwd parameters are removed from mmuserauth CLI command. For more information, see mmuserauth command.

IBM Spectrum Scale on AWS
IBM Spectrum Scale can now be deployed on AWS. For more information, see IBM Spectrum Scale on AWS.

Big data and analytics changes
For information on changes in IBM Spectrum Scale Big Data and Analytics support, see Big Data and Analytics - summary of changes.

Cloud services changes
Cloud services has the following updates:
  • Support for RHEL 7.4 and 7.5 on both Power® and x86 machines.
  • Support for Openstack Swift 2.13, IBM Cloud Object Storage 3.13.4.40, and Swift3 2.13

Start of changeData Access EditionEnd of change
Start of changeIBM Spectrum Scale Data Access Edition is a new edition based on capacity-based licensing that provides identical functionality as IBM Spectrum Scale Standard Edition. For more information, see IBM Spectrum Scale product editions.

End of change
File audit logging updates
File audit logging has the following updates:

File system core improvements
Certificate expiration warnings are logged for key clients and RKM servers
The GPFS daemon writes warning messages into the error log as digital certificates for key clients and Remote Key Management (RKM) servers approach their expiration dates. The frequency of warnings increases as the expiration date nears. Only certificates that are regularly being used for authentication between a key client and an RKM server are tracked. For more information, see Certificate expiration warnings.

Combined gpfs.base and gpfs.ext into a single package on Linux
On Linux, the gpfs.base and gpfs.ext packages are combined into a single package. As a result, the gpfs.ext package is no longer available on Linux.

File system maintenance mode provides a safe access window for file system maintenance
File system maintenance mode provides a way to enable a file system maintenance window. Use file system maintenance mode whenever you perform maintenance on either NSD disks or NSD servers that might result in NSDs becoming unavailable.

You must use the --maintenance-mode parameter with the mmchfs and mmlsfs commands to use file system maintenance mode. For more information, see File system maintenance mode.

The GPFS portability layer (GPL) can be rebuilt automatically
For more information, see the entry Installation improvements later in this topic.

The maxActiveIallocSegs attribute improves the performance of deletes and unlinks
The maxActiveIallocSegs attribute of the mmchconfig command can significantly improve performance in the following scenario:
  1. A single node has created a large number of files in multiple directories.
  2. Processes and threads on multiple nodes are now concurrently attempting to delete or unlink files in those directories
For more information, see mmchconfig command.

The mmnetverify command checks the connectivity of remote clusters
The mmnetverify command checks remote clusters for host-name resolution, network connectivity by ping, and GPFS daemon connectivity. It checks known remote clusters from the mmsdrfs file and can also check remote clusters that are specified on the command line. For more information, see mmnetverify command.

The stat cache is effective on Linux in all configurations
The stat cache is effective on the Linux operating system in all supported hardware configurations, not just when a Local Read-Only Cache (LROC) device is attached. A stat cache improves the performance of system calls that return file attributes, such as stat(). The default values of maxStatCache and the factors for estimating a nondefault value for maxStatCache are now the same for Linux as they are for other supported operating systems. For more information, see mmchconfig command.

Two features cope with long I/O waits on directly attached disks
This feature applies only to disks that a node is directly attached to.
  • The diskIOHang callback event allows you to add notification and data collection scripts to analyze the cause of a local I/O request that has been pending in the node kernel for more than 5 minutes. For more information, see mmaddcallback command.
  • The panicOnIOHang attribute controls whether the GPFS daemon panics the node kernel when a local I/O request has been pending in the kernel for more than five minutes. For more information, see mmchconfig command.

IBM Spectrum Scale management API changes
Added the following API commands:
  • PUT /filesystems/{filesystemName}/audit
  • GET: /smb/shares/{shareName}/acl
  • GET: /smb/shares/{shareName}/acl/{name}
  • DELETE: /smb/shares/{shareName}/acl
  • DELETE: /smb/shares/{shareName}/acl/{name}
  • PUT: /smb/shares/{shareName}/acl/{name}

For more information on the API commands, see IBM Spectrum Scale management API commands. You can also access the documentation corresponding to each API command from the GUI itself. The API documentation is available in the GUI at: https://<IP address or host name of API server>:<port>/ibm/api/explorer/. For example: https://scalegui.ibm.com:443/ibm/api/explorer.

IBM Spectrum Scale GUI changes
The following changes are made to the GUI:
  • Added options to create and manage node classes. The two types of node classes that can be defined in the IBM Spectrum Scale system are system node classes and user-defined node classes. You can create user-defined node classes by using the Nodes > Node Classes > Create Node Class option. The system node classes are pre-defined and you cannot create or modify them using the management GUI. For more information, see Nodes.
  • Added option to enable and disable file audit logging. File audit logging captures file operations on a file system and logs them to a retention enabled fileset. You can enable file audit logging at the file system level while creating or modifying a file system from the Files > File Systems page. For more information, see Creating and managing file systems using GUI.
  • Added option to configure automatic assignment of certain sensors to a single node, in the Services > Performance Monitoring > Sensors page. A single node is automatically selected by the system to run the GPFSFilesetQuota, GPFSFileset, GPFSPool, and GPFSDiskCap sensors.
  • Improved remote cluster monitoring options capabilities. For more information, see Monitoring remote cluster through GUI.
  • Introduced an integrated view of GUI services and GUI user management in the Services > GUI page.

    Removed the GUI Users and GUI Access pages from the Access menu and integrated the GUI user management features in the Services > GUI page. For more information, see GUI services.

  • The GUI automatically logs out the users if the administrator changes the user role or expire the password of the currently logged in user.
  • Improved filtering and listing of events. Added graphical view of events reported against each component in the Monitoring > Events page. Clicking on the graph displays only the relevant events in the grid view. Removed the Unread Events filter option and introduced Current State and Notices filter options.
  • Improved health status monitoring of CES IPs. Renamed Services > CES Network to Services > CES Network and CES IPs. The Addresses section shows the health status of the CES IP component. It also shows the preferred nodes and non-hostable nodes if Node Affinity is selected as the IP address distribution method.
  • Introduced a What's new window to highlight the changes made to the IBM Spectrum Scale GUI in a release. When the user launches the GUI for the first time after installing or upgrading to the latest version, the GUI users can see the list of GUI changes made in that release. The user can also launch the What's New window by using the What's New? option that is available in the Help menu of the management GUI. The Help menu is available at the upper right corner of the GUI.

Installation improvements
The GPFS portability layer (GPL) can be rebuilt automatically.
You can now configure a cluster to automatically rebuild the GPL whenever a new level of the Linux kernel is installed or whenever a new level of IBM Spectrum Scale is installed. For more information, see the description of the autoBuildGPL attribute in the topic mmchconfig command.

Installation toolkit changes

mmces command enhancements

New --extended-list and --full-list options that show additional data for node affinity. For more information, see mmces command.

mmperfmon command enhancements

The query --list=expiredKeys option that displays the group keys for the entities that have not returned any metrics values within the default retention period of 14 days. The delete { --expiredKeys | --key Key[,Key...] } allows users to review and delete historical perfmon keys for renamed and deleted components in the cluster. For more information, see mmperfmon command.

Start of changemmcallhome command enhancementsEnd of change
Start of change

New option that executes one-time gather or send tasks for a Salesforce case descriptor. For more information, see mmcallhome command.

End of change
mmhealth command enhancements

New --show-state-changes option that displays the additional information about the state of a node has been added to the mmhealth command. For more information, see mmhealth command.

NFS changes
CES packages for NFS-Ganesha name changed to avoid conflict with distribution NFS-Ganesha packages.
Object changes
Two parameters were added to the mmobj command. The --pwd-file parameter specifies a file that contains administrative user passwords for Object access protocol authentication configuration. The -Y parameter displays headers and output in a machine-readable, colon-delimited format. For more information, see mmobj command.

IBM Spectrum Scale SMB changes
The following enhancements are available:
  • Configurations
    • IBM Spectrum Scale does not change back the supported SMB protocol versions when they are changed by a user.
      • This does not change the supported protocol levels; it just prevents that changes to unsupported versions are automatically reverted.
      • No longer force SMB2 for 'server min protocol' in registry template.
      • No longer force SMB3 for 'server max protocol' in registry template.
  • Security
    • Local user enumeration without credentials has been disabled by setting 'restrict anonymous = 2' by default. This can be changed back if needed using mmsmb config change --option "restrict anonymous"=0 "
  • Stability enhancements
    • The load on the idmap cache has been reduced by
      • Removing calls to gencache_stabilize() in net utility and on smbd server exit
      • adding an additional cache layer in memory so that the performance of workloads involving many idmap lookups (with hide unreadable, for example) should improve and timeouts during idmap cache access are avoided.
    • More graceful behavior of CTDB in out-of-memory situations (avoid crash, going unhealthy, log memory usage data).
    • Speed up wbinfo -p (the command for local winbind monitoring) to minimize the likelihood of winbindd monitor timeouts and resulting fail-overs.
  • Ubuntu enhancements
    • As a consequence of the system library dependencies, GPFS SMB on Ubuntu now uses heimdal libraries for Kerberos to avoid linking against two Kerberos libraries.
    • Added support for OpenSSL 1.1.0 to allow GPFS SMB build on Ubuntu 18.04.
  • Usability
    • Removed the wrong "malloc fail" error messages and fixed error messages during charset conversion.
    • Adjusted debug level when get_winattrs returns EBADF to remove warning Getting winattrs failed for ..: Bad file descriptor
  • GPFS SMB version enhanced from 4.6.14_gpfs_36 to gpfs_50-1 4.6.15_gpfs_49-1
  • Miscellaneous
    • Cache dfree information based on query path.
    • Fix Windows Quota report issue: Fix keep_old_entries logic for older kerberos libraries.
    • Update SELinux policy module for postfix to avoid SELinux warnings /usr/libexec/postfix/local from getattr.
    • Add TasksMax option to smbd systemd service file for SLES12 and Ubuntu to avoid the OS to prevent forks on new SMB connections as the default is too small.
    • Restored pre-4.6.9 behavior of GPFS SMB to implicitly set SMB_ACE4_SYNCHRONIZE on NFSv4 ACLs - more strict ACLs checks have broken downwards compatibility
    • Fix reporting wrong session times for stale connections in the MMC.

Single IBM Spectrum Scale package for all Linux distributions (per architecture)
There is no longer the need to differentiate between protocols and non-protocols packages. There is now only one package for all Linux distributions.

System Health changes

Upgrades to call home configuration

Updated the list of collected data that is called home.

Watch folder
Watch folder is a flexible API that allows programmatic actions to be taken based on file system events. For more information, see Introduction to watch folder. It has the following features:
  • Watch folder can be run against folders, filesets, and inode spaces.
  • Watch folder is modeled after Linux inotify, but works with clustered file systems and supports recursive watches for filesets and inode spaces.
  • Watch folder has two primary components:
    • The GPFS programming interfaces, which are included within <gpfs_watch.h>. For more information, see Watch folder API.
    • The mmwatch command, which provides information for all of the watches running within a cluster. For more information, see mmwatch command.
  • A watch folder application uses the API to run on a node within an IBM Spectrum Scale cluster.
    • It utilizes the message queue to receive events from multiple nodes and consume from the node that is running the application.
    • Lightweight events come in from all eligible nodes within a cluster and from accessing clusters.
  • Watch folder is integrated into call home, IBM Spectrum Scale snap log collection, and IBM Spectrum Scale trace.

Windows 10 support
IBM Spectrum Scale now supports Windows 10 (Pro and Enterprise editions), in both heterogeneous and homogeneous clusters. Secure Boot must be disabled on Windows 10 nodes for IBM Spectrum Scale to install and function.

Documented commands, structures, and subroutines
The following section lists the modifications to the documented commands, structures, and subroutines:
New commands
The following command is new in this release:
  • mmwatch
New structures
There are no new structures.
New subroutines
The following subroutines are new:
  • gpfs_add_watch
  • gpfs_add_fset_watch
  • gpfs_add_inodespace_watch
  • gpfs_close_watch
  • gpfs_init_watch
  • gpfs_read_watch
  • gpfs_rm_watch
  • gpfs_watch_strerror
Changed commands
The following commands were changed:
  • mmaddcallback
  • mmafmctl
  • mmaudit
  • mmbuildgpl
  • mmcallhome
  • mmces
  • mmchconfig
  • mmhealth
  • mmmsgqueue
  • mmnfs
  • mmobj
  • mmperfmon
  • mmrestripefile
  • mmuserauth
  • spectrumscale
Changed structures
There are no changed structures.
Changed subroutines
There are no changed subroutines.
Deleted commands
There are no deleted commands.
Deleted structures
There are no deleted structures.
Deleted subroutines
There are no deleted subroutines.
Messages
The following are the new, changed, and deleted messages:
New messages
6027-1758, 6027-1759, 6027-1760, 6027-1828, 6027-2409, 6027-2410, 6027-2411, 6027-3731, 6027-3732, 6027-3733, 6027-3734, 6027-3934, 6027-3935, 6027-3936, 6027-3937, and 6027-3409
Changed messages
6027-1265, 6027-1303, 6027-1307, 6027-1309, and 6027-2798
Deleted messages
None.
Changes in documentation
List of documentation changes in product guides and respective Knowledge Center sections

The following is a list of documentation changes including changes in topic titles, changes in placement of topics, and deleted topics:

Table 1. List of changes in documentation
Guide Knowledge center section List of changes
Concepts, Planning, and Installation Guide Product overview
Planning Moved the following topics from the Installing section:Start of changeEnd of change
Upgrading
Administration Guide Configuring Moved the following topics from the Installing section:Start of changeEnd of change
Administering Moved the following topics from the Installing section:Start of changeEnd of change
End of change