Installing IBM Spectrum Scale by using the graphical user interface (GUI)

You can use the GUI to install and configure IBM Spectrum Scale system. The installation GUI is used only for installing the system and a separate management GUI needs to be used for configuring and managing the system.

Note:

The installation GUI is deprecated and it will be removed in a future release. End of change

Prerequisites

The following are the prerequisites for installing IBM Spectrum Scale through installation GUI:

On a cluster where the GUI is installed, other nodes in the cluster need to be able to send notifications to the GUI through HTTP requests. For this purpose, curl, a command line tool and library for transferring data with URLs is used. Therefore, it is necessary to make sure that all nodes in the cluster have curl installed and configured correctly so that it can send HTTP requests to the GUI node. Verify whether the curl is working properly by issuing curl -k https://[GUI NODE NAME OR IP]:443 from the other cluster nodes, which should return the HTML code of the GUI.
If curl is not configured correctly or cannot send HTTP requests to the GUI node, the following error message appears in the mmfs.log of that node:
```
[E] An attempt to send notification to the GUI subsystem failed. response=curl: (28) connect() timed out! rc=28
```
The Network Time Protocol (NTP) must be installed on all nodes on which the IBM Spectrum Scale is being installed through installation GUI.
The prerequisites that are applicable for installing the IBM Spectrum Scale system through CLI is applicable for installation through the GUI as well. For more information on the prerequisites for installation, see Installation prerequisites.

The installation GUI requires port 9080 to be designated for http and port 9443 for https. That is, the installer GUI URL of the http and https connections are http://<install server IP or host name>:9080 and https://<install server IP or host name>:9443 respectively.

Note: To start the graphical installation, the IBM Spectrum Scale package must be extracted. By default, the installation images are extracted to the target directory /usr/lpp/mmfs/5.0.x.x depending on the release version.

By selecting different parameters of the spectrumscale installgui command, you can start, stop, and view the status of the installation GUI.

spectrumscale installgui [-h] {start,stop,status} ...

Example:

To start the installation GUI, issue the following command:

./spectrumscale installgui start

To view the status of the processes that are running on the installation GUI, issue the following command:

./spectrumscale installgui status

The installation process through the GUI automatically stops when you exit the installation GUI. To stop installation process through the CLI, issue the following command:

./spectrumscale installgui stop

Note: The password to access the IBM Spectrum Scale installer GUI is Passw0rd.

In case the installation GUI fails to launch, you can use the logs located at the following location for debugging: /usr/lpp/mmfs/5.0.3.x/installer/gui/wlp/usr/servers/installgui/logs

Limitations of the installation GUI

The following are the limitations of the installation GUI:

The scope of the installation GUI is to install the IBM Spectrum Scale software on cluster nodes, create an IBM Spectrum Scale cluster, and configure NTP. Other initial tasks like creating file systems, creating NSDs, setting up NFS and SMB protocols, object storage, or authentication of protocol users are out of scope of the installation GUI. You need to perform those tasks either through CLI or management GUI.
It supports only a fresh installation of an IBM Spectrum Scale cluster. That is, it does not support to update the system from a previous release to the latest release.
It does not support adding nodes to and removing nodes from the existing IBM Spectrum Scale cluster
You cannot uninstall the existing IBM Spectrum Scale cluster through the GUI.