Installing an external IBM Storage Scale Tiebreaker node

Complete these steps to install an external IBM Storage Scale Tiebreaker node.

Before you begin

Ensure that the following requirements are met:

The following RPM files are installed:
- libaio
- kernel-devel
- libstdc++-devel
- gcc-c++
- dos2unix
KornShell (ksh) is installed. The level of kernel and kernel-devel must be the same.
You must be able to run perl commands. On RHEL 7 and later, the perl-core module is not installed by default. To install perl-core, run the following command:
```
yum install perl-core
```
For more information about the perl commands, see the Red Hat Enterprise Linux® documentation.
Your network is configured with the appropriate network and virtual machine requirements. For more information, see Related concepts.
The requiretty option is disabled on the virtual machine.
The requiretty option in the /etc/sudoers file prevents sudo operations from being run through non-TTY sessions. Because the tiebreaker node must run sudo commands from scripts, the requiretty option must be disabled on the instance where the external tiebreaker node is deployed.
To disable the requiretty option, open the /etc/sudoers file and comment out the following lines:
```
#
 # Disable "ssh hostname sudo <cmd>", because it will show the password in clear.
 # You have to run "ssh -t hostname sudo <cmd>".
 #
 # Defaults requiretty
```
Run the Get External Tiebreaker TAR file operation from the primary instance or mirror instance of your IBM Storage Scale cluster to download the gpfsTieNode.tar.gz file to a temporary location on your local system.

About this task

As part of the external tiebreaker node installation, the pattern creates the required tiebreaker disks, by using internal image files. As a result, it is not required for the external tiebreaker virtual machine (VM) to have access to block storage volumes.

Similarly, when a new file system is created on the primary configuration, the pattern automatically creates a new tiebreaker disk for the new file system, by using internal image files. The size of the external tiebreaker disk is 256 MB.

Procedure

Upload the gpfsTieNode.tar.gz file to a temporary location on the target system where you plan to install your external IBM Storage Scale Tiebreaker node.
Extract the contents of the gpfsTieNode.tar.gz to a temporary location by using these commands:
```
gunzip /tmp/gpfsTieNode.tar.gz
tar -xf /tmp/gpfsTieNode.tar
```
As the root user, run installExternalNode.sh from the root directory where you extracted the files:
```
sudo ./installExternalNode.sh
```
From the Instances page for the Cloud Pak System Software console, select your IBM Storage Scale Primary instance and run the Add New Member operation:
1. From the Instances page, click Manage > Operations > GPFS Manager.
2. Expand the category for Manage Cluster if it is not already expanded.
3. Expand the Add New Member operation section.
4. Select Tiebreaker Node.
5. In the Manager IP field, specify the IP address of the system where you installed the external IBM Storage Scale Tiebreaker node.
6. Click Submit and accept the confirmation prompt.

What to do next

Confirm that the tiebreaker node and disks are created and are visible to the cluster by running Manage Cluster > Run Cluster Operation > Get Cluster Status on the Primary configuration. In the result log, verify that:

The tie rack is available (you should see this line: Tie Rack Name: <tie rack name>).
The tie node is active and part of the quorum (look for the tiebreaker IP address in the cluster status).
The tie disk was created, is up and is in a ready state for each of the file systems available on this cluster.