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Abstract
The IBM Storage Scale Cloudkit command-Line interface (CLI) tool now supports Azure Cloud as technology preview feature in Storage Scale 5.2.0 for evaluation, testing, and non-production purposes.
Content
Description:
The cloudkit provides the ability to deploy an IBM Storage Scale Cluster on Azure public cloud, including provisioning of all required cloud infrastructure, installation, and initial configuration of IBM Storage Scale.
Cloudkit currently supports the following deployment options:
- Deploying an IBM Storage Scale cluster into a customer provisioned Azure VNET (Virtual Network) or creating a new VNET and deploying the Storage Scale cluster into it.
- Deploying an IBM Storage Scale(Storage Only & Compute Only) cluster in different
Profiles such as
i) Throughput-Performance-Persistent-Storage (single Azure Availability Zone)
ii) Balanced (spread across multiple Azure availability zones) - Remote mounting a Storage Scale file system from storage only cluster to a Compute only cluster.
Requirements:
- A IBM Storage scale virtual machine image should be pre-created refer section mentioned below "Manual Scale Image Creation on Azure".
Create Azure service principle with sufficient privileges(Contributor role) refer section mentioned below "Create Azure credentials". A system running either RHEL 8.6, 8.8, 9.0, 9.1, and 9.2 from where the cloudkit can be run
Getting Started:
Once the Storage Scale package extracted, the Storage Scale cloudkit CLI can be found in the directory /usr/lpp/mmfs/5.2.0.0/cloudkit.
Before using the cloudkit to deploy a Storage Scale cluster on the Azure cloud, the following needs to be run:
- Edit cloudkit configuration file and update feature_gate field with
TechPreviewNoUpgrade
Example:
[default]
cloudkit_key = <password>
feature_gate = TechPreviewNoUpgrade
- cloudkit init command to install all prerequisites and dependencies.
- cloudkit configure command to provide the Azure account API credentials. This command needs tenantId, clientId, subscriptionId & clientSecret.
To create an IBM Storage Scale cluster on the Azure cloud, the following command needs to be run:
cloudkit create cluster
For remote mounting a file system from an IBM Storage Scale storage cluster to a client only cluster, the following command needs to be run:
cloudkit grant filesystem
To delete the IBM Storage Scale cluster along with all cloud resources that were provisioned, the following needs to be run:
cloudkit delete cluster
For more information on all supported operations, the following command needs to be run:
cloudkit -h
Limitations:
The cloudkit CLI for Azure can be run only from RHEL 8.6, 8.8, 9.0, 9.1, and 9.2 on the x86 platform.
- The cloudkit CLI for Azure can be run only from on-premise VM(Virtual Machine) or physical host.
- The cloudkit CLI for Azure currently only supports creating a Storage Scale cluster running RHEL 8.7.
- The cloudkit CLI does not currently support being able to expand or contract an already provisioned Azure Storage Scale cluster.
- The cloudkit CLI does not currently support Image creation.
- The cloudkit CLI does not currently support provisioning Combined cluster(Storage and Compute) .
- The cloudkit CLI does not currently support Throughput-Performance-Scratch-Storage and Throughput-Advance-Persistent-Storage Profile.
Create Azure credentials:
Create a service principal with az ad sp create-for-rbac command and output the credentials:
az ad sp create-for-rbac --query "{ client_id: appId, client_secret: password, tenant_id: tenant }"
An example of the output from the preceding commands is as follows:
{
"client_id": "00000000-0000-0000-0000-34XXXXXXX",
"client_secret": "00000000-0000-0000-0000-50XXXXXXX",
"tenant_id": "00000000-0000-0000-0000-40XXXXXXX",
}
To authenticate to Azure, you also need to obtain your Azure subscription ID with az account show:
az account show --query "{ subscription_id: id }"
An example of the output from the preceding commands is as follows:
{
"subscription_id": "00000000-aea2-4177-a0f1-7117aXXXX"
}
Make note of client_id, client_secret , tenant_id & subscription_id which will be required during “cloudkit configure” operations.
Manual Scale Image Creation on Azure:
Use this information to manually create scale image on azure.
1.) Create Azure RHEL VM using Azure portal with following RHEL version.
OS Name : Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.7
Publisher: RedHat, Offer: RHEL, Sku: 8_7, Version: latest
Note : Ensure VM is accessible using SSH and SCP.
2.) Download the IBM Spectrum Scale Data Management Edition install package (from Fix Central) and copy the same to above VM.
3.) Manually installing the GPFS software packages on Linux nodes -refer
4.) The VM may require to install additional kernel-devel, kernel headers which are required to build the GPFS portability layer.
dnf install -y kernel-devel-`uname -r` kernel-headers-`uname -r`
dnf install -y make gcc-c++ elfutils-libelf-devel bind-utils
5.) Use the mmbuildgpl command to manage and verify prerequisite packages for Linux and build the GPFS portability layer.
$sudo /usr/lpp/mmfs/bin/mmbuildgpl
6.) Verify that the PATH environment variable for the root user on this VM to include /usr/lpp/mmfs/bin
$sudo sh -c "echo 'export $PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin:/usr/lpp/mmfs/bin' >> /root/.bashrc"
7.) Delete copied SE package inside the VM.
8.) Create a new Azure Managed Image using the below steps;
- Go to the Azure portal, then search for the above Virtual machine.
- On the page for the VM, on the upper menu, select Capture.
- In the Create an image page, either select Create new and enter a name, or select a resource group to use from the drop-down list.
- Create a managed image, select No for image gallery option. this will capture a managed image. The only other required information is a name for the image.
9.) Once managed image is created , make a note of Image name which is required during “cloudkit create cluster” operations.
Note: We welcome your feedback. If you have any comments, suggestions or questions regarding any of the information provided here, email scale@us.ibm.com.
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Document Information
Modified date:
26 April 2024
UID
ibm17149295