IBM Support

IBM Storage Scale Technical Preview: Support for ARM based processors

News


Abstract

IBM Storage Scale 5.1.9.0 - 5.1.9.4 is available on the Advanced RISC Machine (ARM) architecture as a technical preview (non-production environment use only). With the release of Storage Scale 5.2.0.0, ARM architecture was moved to official support and technical preview ended in 5.1.9.5. See https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/storage-scale/5.2.0?topic=summary-changes

Content

IBM Storage Scale is now available for ARM based architectures that support an instruction set of ARMv8.2-A or later.
IBM Storage Scale 5.1.9 has been tested on Ampere Altra based systems, and has been successfully installed on AWS Graviton 2 and 3 systems.  At initial ARM support in 5.1.9.0, the only supported operating system environment was RHEL 9.2.  Check the FAQ for supported Operating Systems in Storage Scale 5.2.0.0.
The following features of IBM Storage Scale 5.1.9 have been tested on ARM based systems:
  • rpm based install
  • Basic file system functionality on a NSD client.  Including, but not limited to, mount/unmount, I/O operations, snapshots, quotas, and policies.
  • Manager roles: file system manager / token manager / cluster manager
  • RDMA (IB or RoCE)
  • Health monitoring
The following features have not be fully tested but are expected to work:
  • Call-home
  • File audit logging
  • Compression
  • Watch folders
  • Performance data collection (Zimon)
The following features are not supported:
  • Deployment tool (spectrumscale command)
  • Encryption
  • NSD server
  • GPU
  • Storage Scale GUI
  • Active file management (AFM)
  • Policy tiering to offline storage
  • Erasure Code Edition (ECE)
  • Protocols and CES
For installation on the aarch64 platform please follow the instructions for the rpm based Storage Scale installation on Linux nodes on x86_64:
The packages for ARM can be recognized by the platform identifier “aarch64”, for example gpfs.base-5.1.9-0.aarch64.rpm.
Note: Any IBM Storage Scale features not mentioned as explicitly supported are presumed to be unsupported.
Amazon Web Services, AWS, the Powered by AWS logo, and AWS Graviton are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates."

[{"Type":"MASTER","Line of Business":{"code":"LOB69","label":"Storage TPS"},"Business Unit":{"code":"BU048","label":"IBM Software"},"Product":{"code":"STXKQY","label":"IBM Storage Scale"},"ARM Category":[{"code":"a8m3p000000hAkYAAU","label":"GPFS"}],"Platform":[{"code":"PF016","label":"Linux"}],"Version":"5.1.9"}]

Document Information

Modified date:
14 January 2025

UID

ibm17066226

Page Feedback