Summary of changes

• Range eviction of data in cache allows administrators to provide offset and length pair to evict the data from AFM and AFM to cloud object storage filesets.
• Administrators now can enable NFSv4 at the AFM fileset level.
• The temporary directories that are needed for recovery or resynchronization of AFM to cloud object storage are now customizable. Meaning, administrators can use afmRecoveryUseFset (for fileset level) and afmRecoveryDir (for cluster level) to set specific temporary directories.

• Administrators can configure automated eviction after upload or reconcile tasks.
• S3 can be used to access data managed by AFM. For more information, see S3 support overview.

• Azure Cloud Services is added to the public clouds where cloudkit can be used.
• Active file management (AFM) to cloud object storage (COS) is now offered for Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
• As a technology preview, the Cloudkit CLI offers support for AFM-COS setup by using Azure Blob Storage and Azure IBM Storage Scale clusters, see the following IBM Storage Scale support page: https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/7165571.
• As a technology preview, the Cloudkit CLI offers support for CES and protocols configuration on AWS. For more information, see the following IBM Storage Scale support page: https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/7165478.

• From version 5.2.0.1 onward, IBM Storage Scale can use IBM Key Protect with Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP) as a back-end server for file system encryption. The IBM Key Project with KMIP is available as a service in IBM Cloud and, by using the regular setup, can be configured as a back-end key server for IBM Storage Scale for file system encryption.
• Starting with the file system format level 35.00 (available with IBM Storage Scale 5.2.1.0), the mmaudit commandthe mmaudit command in the IBM Storage Scale: Command and Programming Reference Guide can provide information about the CLOSEWRITE events. This is a new event type that gets logged when a file is opened for a writing operation and then closed.
• NVMe persistent reservations for multi-attach volumes in Amazon Web Services (AWS). Added support for NVMe reservations for improved failover times, similar to SCSI persistent reservations (PR). This support is limited to multi-attach volumes in AWS virtual machines.
• From version 5.2.1 onward, nodes that are expelled by using the mmexpelnode command are not allowed to rejoin the cluster until they are removed from the list by using mmexpelnode -r/--reset (unless the -o/--once option is specified). In previous levels of IBM Storage Scale, expelled nodes were allowed to rejoin if the node appointed as cluster manager changed. Now, nodes that are expelled with mmexpelnode stay expelled, even if the cluster manager goes down or otherwise changes. The new configuration can be reverted by issuing the mmchconfig disablePersistExpelList=yes command. For more information, see mmchconfig command and The mmexpelnode command.
• Improved administration options for expiring or expired cluster keys. Administrators can ease their planning of new keys generation and commit by harnessing a new field and a new option that are introduced in version 5.2.1.0. Supported by mmauth show and mmremotecluster show commands, the Key Expiration field displays the expiration date for a key. And, if the cluster keys have expired by the time they are consulted, the mmauth command can be used with the --force option to generate new cluster keys. For more information, see mmauth command and mmremotecluster command.
• Improved performance in file creation or deletion during an mmfsckx command scanning of large reserved files. For more information, see mmfsckx command.
• The NSD server functionality is now supported on arm64 platforms.
• Optimized the compatibility mode for GPU direct storage to contribute to improve performance. For more information, see GPUDirect Storage support for IBM Storage Scale.
• Improved logic to better handle IPv6/IPv4 mixed multi-cluster environment, which permits an IPv6 remote cluster and an IPv4 remote cluster both join an IPv6-enabled home cluster in some conditions.

• IBM Storage Scale 5.2.1. supports the S3 protocol.
• Updated Samba on IBM Storage Scale to the upstream Samba 4.19 version.
• By default, the server signing SMB configuration parameter is set to mandatory. For the SMB2 protocol, by design, signing cannot be disabled. If this parameter value is already set before the upgrade, the previously set value does not change after the upgrade. However, if you want to set other value, you can set the value after the upgrade, and services need to be restarted.
  Important: An old install that did not set server signing will change and have mandatory turned on after update.
  For more information, see mmsmb command.
• Minimum GnuTLS 3.6.13 is required for SMB. GnuTLS 3.7.2 is required on systems without the Linux getrandom(). These GnuTLS versions are present on the minimum supported OS releases.
• The time that is taken by the mmsmb exportacl command for a large number of SMB exports is improved significantly.

• Supports installation of S3 protocol packages on CES nodes.

For more information, see IBM Storage Scale management API endpoints.

• Starting with IBM Storage Scale 5.2.1, signed kernel modules for secure boot can be used on Linux on Z within environments that use RHEL 9.4. The gpfs.bin.rpm file that contains the signed kernel modules and the public key must be downloaded from Fix Central. For more information, see Signed kernel modules for UEFI secure boot on x86_64 and secure boot Linux on Z.
• Added SMC-D with SELinux enforcing mode. For more information, see detailed substeps in Configuring shared memory communications direct.
• Added SMC-D connections monitoring functionality into the mmhealth NETWORK component. For more information, see Monitoring the health of a node.
• IBM Storage Scale 5.2.1 supports S3 on Linux on Z.
  Note: Multiprotocol data access with S3 is not yet supported with Linux on Z.

IBM Storage Scale 5.2.1 supports the S3 (Simple Storage Service) access protocol. It provides high-performance and scalable S3 object access to data, which is stored in IBM Storage Scale file systems. It is integrated with Cluster Export Services (CES) to provide highly available S3 access service in an IBM Storage Scale cluster.

New commands

• mms3
• mmpstat

New structures

There are no new structure changes.

New subroutines

There are no new subroutines.

New user exits

There are no new user exits.

Changed commands

• cloudkit
• mmaddcallback
• mmafmcosctl
• mmafmctl
• mmauth
• mmces
• mmchconfig
• mmcrfileset
• mmchfileset
• mmexpelnode
• mmhealth
• mmimportnvmeof
• mmkeyserver
• mmperfmon
• mmremotecluster
• mmsmb
• spectrumscale

Changed structures

There are no changed structures.

Changed subroutines

There are no changed subroutines.

Deleted commands

There are no deleted commands.

Deleted structures

There are no deleted structures.

Deleted subroutines

There are no deleted subroutines.

New messages

6027-2577, 6027-3957, and 6027-3958

Changed messages

There are no changed messages.

Deleted messages

There are no deleted messages.