Mixed operating system support with the installation toolkit
You can use the installation toolkit to install GPFS and deploy protocols in a cluster that contains nodes that are running on different operating systems. Several validations are done when you use the spectrumscale command in a mixed operating system cluster.
The following operating systems are supported with the installation toolkit in a mixed operating system cluster.
CPU architecture | Operating system |
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x86_64 |
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s390x |
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- The object protocol is not supported on SLES 12.
- SMB, NFS, and object protocols are not supported on the s390x architecture.
- SMB, NFS, and object protocols are not supported on SLES 15.
- In a mixed operating system cluster, all protocol nodes must be running on the same operating system. However, nodes that are running on different minor versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.x (7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 7.5, or 7.6) can be designated as protocol nodes in the same cluster.
- In a mixed operating system cluster, all nodes must have the same CPU architecture and endianness.
The installation toolkit performs the required validations in a mixed operating system cluster to prevent users from attempting any configurations that are not supported. These validations include the following.
Operation that is attempted with the installation toolkit | Validations done |
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Node addition by using the spectrumscale node add NodeName command | Check whether the operating system of the target node is supported. If it is not supported, an error occurs. |
Protocol node designation by using the spectrumscale node add NodeName -p command |
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Protocol enablement by using the spectrumscale enable Protocol command | Check whether the protocol being enabled is supported on the operating system that is running on the node. If the protocol is not supported, an error occurs and you cannot continue with the installation and deployment. For example, if you try to enable object on a node running on SLES 12, an error occurs. |
Mixed operating system support during upgrade
During the upgrade precheck, the installation toolkit performs a comparison of the versions of the installed packages with the versions of packages in the repository. In a mixed operating system cluster, the comparison is done with the package repository applicable for the operating system running on the respective nodes.