ADSM-L

Re: [ADSM-L] Shared file systems other than GPFS

2017-02-23 09:40:22
Subject: Re: [ADSM-L] Shared file systems other than GPFS
From: "Harris, Steven" <steven.harris AT BTFINANCIALGROUP DOT COM>
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2017 14:38:12 +0000
Thanks Frank 

I appreciate the input.

Steve 

-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf Of 
Frank Kraemer
Sent: Thursday, 23 February 2017 10:55 PM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: Re: [ADSM-L] Shared file systems other than GPFS

Steve,

Spectrum Scale (aka GPFS) is a scalable paralell Filesystem for High 
Performance I/O applications:

the most important thing is that Spectrum Scale (GPFS) is a paralell filesystem 
and of course it's a shared filesystem. Each GPFS Server nodes offers something 
called an "NSD" service (NSD = network shared disk). A filesystem is striped of 
all available NSD's. The more NSD's the more I/O performance you get. Each NSD 
is a 1:1 mapping of a local raw disk (on aix e.g. /dev/hdisk67 on e.g. Linux 
/dev/sdb). GPFS can use all sorts of disks provided by the underlaying OS 
(SATA, SAS, FC, SVC, SSD, NVMe, RAM disks, etc.).

Network Shared Disk (NSD) is the key factor:

A filesystem is the sum of all the NSD's that you allocate to it. Yes you can 
span a single filesystem over AIX and Linux at the same time.
Adding/removing GPFS nodes while the system is up and running - no problem!
The new GUI helps newbies to be learn fast. To setup GPFS from ground is a 
matter of minutes...it takes longer for me to write this email than to setup a 
GPFS cluster :-)

It's all about performance:

We have customers that run workloads north of 400 GB/sec from a single 
application to the filesystem. A single ESS (Elastic Storage Server model
GL6) will give you 27.000 MB/sec file I/O per box - just adding boxes will add 
a multiple of this number to your performance. There are customers who run 40 
and more ESS GL6 boxes as one single filesystem. TSM servers can take the full 
benefit of this performance. TSM DB, Log and Storage Pools can be placed on 
GPFS filesystems.

Steps to setup GPFS on a number of nodes:

1) Install OS on Nodes, Images,...(VMware is supported - yes)
2) Install GPFS LPP on AIX, RPMs on Linux or MSI on Windows (Yes - we have full 
windows support)
3) Define/Prepare OS raw disks with OS level commands (e.g. on AIX mkvg, mklv, 
...)
3) Define/Setup a GPFS Cluster using the existing IP connection; define and 
distribute ssh keys to nodes; NTP setup;
4) Create NSD's from existing RAW disks (it's just a 1:1 mapping)
5) Define GPFS filesystem(s) on related NSD's
6) Mount GPFS filesystems on all nodes in the cluster
7) -done-

(For Step 3, 4 and 5 there is just ONE text file that you can prepare/edit and 
reuse it for all 3 steps. Takes about 40 sec to do all steps even for a big 
system.)

How to start ?

1) Download the IBM GPFS VMware image from the GPFS web site. It's a full 
function image with no limts for testing & learning.
2) On a laptop create 3 VMware machines and install the images.
3) Add some VMware defined disk for testing.
4) Start installation and setup. Perfect for playing with the system.
5) After 2 day's you are the GPFS expert :-)

Are there other filesystems?

Yes, there are a large number of filesystems on the market. Every week there is 
a new kid on the block as long as VC money is flooding Silicon Valley startups 
:-) If you think GPFS is complex than please try Luste and you will find GPFS a 
piece of cake. Lustre is an overlay filesystem. You need local filesystem on 
each node and than Lustre will run "ontop" of the multiple local filesystems to 
distribute the data. Runs only on Linux, you need much more skills and know how 
from my point of view...but it's a good system, if you can deal with the 
complexity. (Linux only of course no AIX
support.)

Gluster from RedHat is easy to setup but it's very slow and does not scale 
well. It's not used in any large installation where performance is relevant. 
Redhat has too many filesystems on the truck there is some confusion were to 
go. They have GFS, GFS2, Gluster and Ceph...just too much choice for me. (Linux 
only of course no AIX support.)

BeeGFS from Kaiserslautern in the Pfalz is another alternative filesystem.
It's a spin-off of the German research community.

Hedvig - new kid on the block...I never saw a customer in real life but strong 
marketing on the web.

Ceph from ex-Inktank is very good for running OpenStack block device support 
but the filesystem "plugin" is a poor implentation from my experience.

NFS - not a parallel filesystem at all it's 1990' technology, has a lack of 
security and limited I/O efficiency. Works fine but is painfully slow. Of 
course NetApp and EMC Isilon will tell you a different story here.

[....]

GPFS is proven for TSM workloads, it's fully supported and speed is just a 
matter of adding more hardware to the floor. It has full support for DB2 and 
yes also Oracle (!). You can perfectly use GPFS as target for the Oracle RMAN 
tool. SAP HANA runs on GPFS as well as SAS.

-frank-

P.S. You can get GPFS not only from IBM - Lenovo, NEC, DDN, .... and a lot of 
others can help too; this option will help you to find a good commercial 
offering. You are not locked-in to a single vendor like with Dell/EMC Isilon ;-)

Frank Kraemer
IBM Consulting IT Specialist  / Client Technical Architect Am Weiher 24, 65451 
Kelsterbach mailto:kraemerf AT de.ibm DOT com
voice: +49-(0)171-3043699 / +4970342741078 IBM Germany


> TSM server 7.1 on AIX, 7.1 TSM for VE on Linux X86_64 with storage 
> agent, currently backing up to Protectier VTL.
>
> The only supported file sharing is via GPFS, and I don't think I can 
> justify the complexity and expense of that. However there are a lot of 
> shared filesystems out there.  Is anyone running Gluster, Lustre, or 
> something similar and doing storage agent backups on that.  It will 
> obviously need to run on AIX and Linux and ideally should have minimal 
> set up.
>
> Ideas welcome.
>
> Steve
>
> Steven Harris
> TSM Admin/Consultant
> Canberra Australia

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