Steps for establishing and starting your IBM Spectrum Scale cluster

There are several steps you must perform to establish and start your IBM Spectrum Scale™ cluster. This topic provides the information you need for performing those steps.

The installation toolkit, available on a few Linux distributions, automates many of the steps listed below.

You can install IBM Spectrum Scale and deploy protocols either manually or by using the installation toolkit. This topic provides the information you need for establishing and starting your IBM Spectrum Scale cluster manually. If you have already installed IBM Spectrum Scale with the installation toolkit, these steps have already been completed.

Follow these steps to establish your IBM Spectrum Scale cluster:

Review supported hardware, software, and limits by reviewing the IBM Spectrum Scale FAQ in IBM® Knowledge Center for the latest recommendations on establishing a IBM Spectrum Scale cluster.
Install the IBM Spectrum Scale licensed program on your system:
- For existing systems, see Upgrading.
- For new systems:
  - For your Linux nodes, see Installing IBM Spectrum Scale on Linux nodes and deploying protocols.
  - For your AIX® nodes, see Installing IBM Spectrum Scale on AIX nodes.
  - For your Windows nodes, see Installing IBM Spectrum Scale on Windows nodes.
Decide which nodes in your system will be quorum nodes (see Quorum).
Create your GPFS cluster by issuing the mmcrcluster command. See GPFS cluster creation considerations.
Use the mmchlicense command to assign an appropriate GPFS license to each of the nodes in the cluster. See IBM Spectrum Scale license designation for more information.

If you use the installation toolkit to install IBM Spectrum Scale, following steps 2 through 5, and optionally, step 6 are completed by the installation toolkit.

After your IBM Spectrum Scale cluster has been established:

Ensure you have configured and tuned your system according to the values suggested in Configuring and tuning your system for GPFS.
Start IBM Spectrum Scale by issuing the mmstartup command. For more information, see mmstartup command.
Create new disks for use in your file systems by issuing the mmcrnsd command. See Network Shared Disk (NSD) creation considerations.
Create new file systems by issuing the mmcrfs command. See File system creation considerations.
Mount your file systems by issuing the mmmount command.
As an optional step, you can also create a temporary directory (/tmp/mmfs) to collect problem determination data. The /tmp/mmfs directory can be a symbolic link to another location if more space can be found there. If you decide to do so, the temporary directory should not be placed in an IBM Spectrum Scale file system, as it might not be available if IBM Spectrum Scale fails.
If a problem should occur, IBM Spectrum Scale might write 200 MB or more of problem determination data into /tmp/mmfs. These files must be manually removed when any problem determination is complete. This should be done promptly so that a NOSPACE condition is not encountered if another failure occurs. An alternate path can be specified by issuing the mmchconfig dataStructureDump command.