Getting started with IBM Spectrum Scale

With IBM® Storage Scale, you can deploy HPC clusters that use IBM Storage Scale as a storage solution. The deployment is performed by using Terraform and IBM Cloud Schematics as automation frameworks. The following steps outline the high-level flow of events:

Create a workspace on IBM Cloud Schematics that uses the Terraform code that is developed for this offering. This step defines the set of configuration properties that are used to perform the automation.
Generate a plan to confirm whether the configuration properties are valid, so that when you run the Terraform code, all of the resources are provisioned correctly. If the validation fails, fix the configuration properties and try again.
Apply a plan triggers the actual deployment of the IBM Cloud resources to have an HPC cluster up and running by the time the deployment completes. If the deployment fails, identify the reason for failure, fix the problem, and try again. If a change is needed to the configuration properties, it might be better to generate a plan again.

If instead of using IBM Cloud Schematics you decide to deploy your IBM Storage Scale cluster through the IBM Cloud catalog, when you click Install, the Generate plan action is skipped, and the steps go from Create workspace to Apply plan directly. You need to enter values in the catalog that work for your permissions and IBM Cloud account. If the deployment fails, the Schematics UI can be used to fix the errors, and you can retry the Apply Plan step.

Before you can deploy your Storage Scale cluster, you need to create or gather some information. To get started, complete the following steps.

Create SSH key

Create SSH keys in your IBM Cloud account. You might need multiple SSH keys if you want to use different keys to access the bastion host, compute cluster, and storage cluster. Ensure that the SSH keys are present in the same resource group and region where the cluster is provisioned. The offering supports passing multiple, comma-separated SSH keys, if the cluster needs multiple SSH keys. For more information, see Managing SSH keys.

Create custom image

You can create a custom image for your compute nodes or use the default image. But for bootstrap and storage nodes, only the default image is supported. For more information, see Planning for custom images.

IBM Cloud provides pre-built images with RHEL to help you get started quickly. Depending on your choice of RHEL 7.9 or RHEL 8.6, you can select hpcc-scale5181-rhel79 or hpcc-scale5181-rhel86. See the compute_vsi_osimage_name parameter in Deployment values. In addition to the base operating system, the image includes the Storage Scale software packages that allow for the Storage Scale shared file system to be automatically mounted and ready for use after the creation and configuration of the cluster is complete.

Gather public IP address

You need to provide your public IP addresses from where you want to access the environment after it's provisioned. You provide these public IP addresses in the remote_cidr_blocks deployment value. For more information, see Deployment values.

Identify cluster deployment location

You need to decide where you want your cluster deployed by choosing an IBM Cloud region and availability zone. You provide this location information when you configure your workspace. For more information, see Region and data center locations for resource deployment.

Enable encryption (Optional)

You need to decide whether you want to enable encryption for your file system. The Spectrum Scale cluster file system can be encrypted by using the IBM Security® Guardium® Key Lifecycle Manager (GKLM). If you want to enable encryption, you need to define the scale_encryption_xxx deployment values when you configure your workspace. For more information about enabling encryption and configuring these deployment values, see Enabling encryption by using GKLM.

Next steps

After you've gathered the necessary input values to define your cluster configuration, you are ready to deploy your IBM Storage Scale cluster. The Storage Scale cluster can be deployed on IBM Cloud by using the IBM Cloud catalog tile, Schematics UI, Schematics CLI, or the Schematics APIs. If you want to deploy your cluster by using the CLI or API, review the prerequisites for your interface of choice:

After you've created and gathered your information and reviewed any additional prerequisites for your interface of choice, you are ready to begin Creating a workspace.