IBM Spectrum Scale product editions

IBM Spectrum Scale offers different editions based on functional levels.

Note:

All IBM Spectrum Scale software nodes in a cluster must have the same edition installed. Capacity licensing and socket licensing cannot be mixed in the same cluster, with the exception of ESS. ESS can be mixed with IBM Spectrum Scale software in the same cluster provided one of the following requirements is met:

All nodes in the cluster run Data Access Edition or Standard Edition.
All nodes in the cluster run Data Management Edition or Advanced Edition.

For information about capacity licensing, see Capacity-based licensing. For information about the features available in respective IBM Spectrum Scale editions, see Table 1.

IBM Spectrum Scale Data Access Edition

Available on AIX®, Linux®, and Windows. This edition provides base IBM Spectrum Scale functions. On AIX and Linux, the available features include Information Lifecycle Management (ILM), Active File Management (AFM), and Clustered NFS (CNFS). CNFS is not available on Linux on Z. On Windows, the available features include limited Information Lifecycle Management (ILM).

On Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.x and 8.x, SLES 15, and Ubuntu 20.04, the available features include the ability to enable and use the additional protocol functionality integration (NFS and SMB). On Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.x, the object protocol functionality is also supported.

IBM Spectrum Scale Data Management Edition

Available on AIX and Linux. This edition provides all the features of the Data Access Edition and certain additional features.

IBM Spectrum Scale Developer Edition

Available on Red Hat Enterprise Linux on x86_64. This edition provides all the features of the Data Management Edition and it is limited to 12 TB per cluster. You can check your licensed usage on IBM Spectrum Scale Developer Edition by using the mmlslicense --licensed-usage command. For more information, see mmlslicense command.

Note: This edition is made available free of cost for customers to try IBM Spectrum Scale features in test setups. Its use in production is not allowed. There is no support from IBM for IBM Spectrum Scale Developer Edition.

IBM Spectrum Scale Erasure Code Edition

This edition provides identical functionality to IBM Spectrum Scale Data Management Edition plus the support for storage rich servers. IBM Spectrum Scale Erasure Code Edition provides network-dispersed erasure coding, distributing data and metadata across the internal disks of a cluster of servers. This allows IBM Spectrum Scale to use internal disks as reliable storage with low overhead and high performance.

Legacy editions:

IBM Spectrum Scale Standard Edition: This edition provides comparable functionality to IBM Spectrum Scale Data Access Edition under socket-based licensing. Standard Edition does not provide erasure coding and it is not supported with ESS.
IBM Spectrum Scale Advanced Edition: This edition provides comparable functionality to IBM Spectrum Scale Data Management Edition under socket-based licensing. Advanced Edition does not provide erasure coding and it is not supported with ESS.

Note:

IBM Spectrum Scale Standard Edition licenses can only be purchased by existing licensees of Standard Edition. IBM Spectrum Scale Advanced Edition licenses can only be purchased by existing licensees of Advanced Edition. All others must purchase Data Access Edition, Data Management Edition, or Erasure Code Edition.
IBM Spectrum Scale Standard Edition and IBM Spectrum Scale Advanced Edition can be licensed by IBM Spectrum Scale Client license, IBM Spectrum Scale Server license, and IBM Spectrum Scale FPO license. For more information, see IBM Spectrum Scale license designation.

Table 1 lists the availability of key features in the IBM Spectrum Scale editions.

Table 1. Features in IBM Spectrum Scale editions
Feature	Data Access	Data Management¹	Erasure Code Edition
Multi-protocol scalable file service with simultaneous access to a common set of data	✓	✓	✓
Facilitate data access with a global namespace, massively scalable file system, quotas and snapshots, data integrity and availability, and filesets	✓	✓	✓
Simplify management with GUI	✓	✓	✓
Improved efficiency with QoS and compression	✓	✓	✓
Create optimized tiered storage pools based on performance, locality, or cost	✓	✓	✓
Simplify data management with Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) tools that include policy based data placement and migration	✓	✓	✓
Enable worldwide data access using AFM asynchronous replication	✓	✓	✓
Asynchronous multi-site Disaster Recovery		✓	✓
Hybrid cloud (TCT)		✓	✓
Protect data with native software encryption and secure erase, NIST compliant and FIPS certified		✓	✓
File audit logging		✓	✓
Watch folder		✓	✓
Erasure coding	ESS only	ESS only	✓

Note: ¹IBM Spectrum Scale Developer Edition provides the same features as Data Management Edition and it is limited to 12 TB per cluster.

Consult the IBM Spectrum Scale FAQ in IBM® Documentation for the latest features included in each edition.