Summary of changes

This topic summarizes changes to the IBM Spectrum Scale licensed program and the IBM Spectrum Scale library. Within each topic, these markers ( Start of change End of change ) surrounding text or illustrations indicate technical changes or additions that are made to the previous edition of the information.

Summary of changes
for IBM Spectrum Scale version 5.0.3
as updated, September 2019

This release of the IBM Spectrum Scale licensed program and the IBM Spectrum Scale library includes the following improvements. All improvements are available after an upgrade, unless otherwise specified.

AFM and AFM DR-related changes

Added a new configuration parameter - afmRefreshAsync to enable cache data refresh operation in asynchronous mode. For more information, see mmchconfig command.
Added a use case - Data migration by using AFM migration enhancements.
Added Example of AFM support for kerberos-enabled NFS protocol exports under Administering AFM.

Authentication-related changes

mmuserauth service list reports servers as "*" indicating any domain controller in the environment can be used.
mmuserauth service check --server-reachability output enhanced to report Domain Controller connected by each CES node.
mmuserauth service create reports a warning message for clock skew greater than 5 minutes between CES node and domain controller.
File Authentication configuration is supported with sudo setup.

Big data and analytics changes

For information on changes in IBM Spectrum Scale Big Data and Analytics support, see Big Data and Analytics - summary of changes.

Cloud services changes

Auto container spillover feature - A new container is automatically created during reconcile when the specified threshold of files is reached, thus enabling improved maintenance.
Client-assisted recalls - Recalls are performed directly without any intervention or interaction with the Cloud services Server category of nodes thus improving efficiency and performance.
Microsoft Azure - Microsoft Azure object storage service supported.
Linux on Z supported.

File system core improvements

Compatibility settings resolve the unit types that are returned by statfs and statvfs

The linuxStatfsUnits attribute controls the types of units that are returned in f_bsize, f_rsize, f_blocks, and f_bfree for compatibility with earlier or later versions of statfs and statvfs. For more information, see mmchconfig command.

QoS for I/O is enhanced to scale better in large clusters

QoS dynamically adjusts the frequency of data collection based on the number of nodes that have mounted the file system. Alternatively you can configure a fixed-value custom frequency with the mmchqos command. For more information, see mmchqos command.

zfast, alphae, and alphah libraries compress genomic data

File compression methods for genomic data include zfast compression for active genomic data in FASTA, SAM, and VCF format and alphae and alphah compression for active genomic data in FASTQ format. For more information, see File compression.

The mmaddnode command assigns a license to the new node

The licenseType node descriptor assigns a license of the specified type to the new node. For more information, see mmaddnode command.

The proactiveReconnnect parameter (mmchconfig command) reduces node expulsion that is caused by short-term network outages

The proactiveReconnnect attribute proactively closes and reestablishes problematic TCP connections between nodes. This feature can prevent nodes from being expelled from a cluster when TCP connections go into error states that are caused by packet loss in the network or in the adapter. For more information, see mmchconfig command.

The mmfsck command repairs block allocation map corruption in online mode

The command detects and repairs structural corruptions such as corrupted block headers and corrupted disk addresses in online mode. For more information, see mmfsck command.

The mmkeyserv command shows certificate expiration dates

The server show and client show parameters display expiration dates for the REST certificate and the KMIP certificate. For more information, see mmkeyserv command.

The mmnetverify command checks RDMA connectivity

The rdma-connectivity option verifies the verbsPorts configuration and checks node connectivity through the active InfiniBand interfaces. For more information, see mmnetverify command.

The mmsdrrestore command repairs CCR files that are corrupted or lost on all quorum nodes

The --ccr-repair parameter repairs files in the CCR committed directory when they have been lost or corrupted on all the quorum nodes. The manual procedure is no longer required. For AIX® you must install Python 2.7.5 or later from the AIX Toolbox for Linux Applications. For more information, see mmsdrrestore command.

The primary-secondary configuration server feature is deprecated

The primary and secondary configuration server functionality is deprecated and will be removed in a future release. The default configuration service is CCR:

The mmcrcluster command no longer creates primary and secondary configuration servers or allows a cluster to be created with a primary-secondary configuration. For more information, see mmcrcluster command.
The mmchcluster command still switches from the CCR configuration to primary-secondary configuration, with warnings and checks. For more information, see mmchcluster command.

Other improvements

You can use the --use-stale-replica option for the mmfsck command to read possible stale replica blocks from unrecovered disks. For more information, see mmfsck command.
You can install a gpfs.gplbin package on a machine that has a different Linux kernel than the machine on which the gpfs.gplbin package was built. For more information, see mmbuildgpl command.
I/O error checking is improved for locally attached disks of NSD servers. For more information, see Additional considerations for managing disks.
Performance is improved for a large number of nodes concurrently creating files in a small directory.
Reporting is improved for possible network issues.
Error messages are more detailed for failed CCR requests during mm-commands. For more information, see error messages 6027-4200 [E] through 6027-4207 [E].

IBM Spectrum Scale Erasure Code Edition

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.

For more information, see IBM Spectrum Scale Erasure Code Edition documentation.

IBM Spectrum Scale on AWS changes

For information about changes in IBM Spectrum Scale on AWS 1.2.0, see IBM Spectrum Scale on AWS 1.2.0: Summary of changes.

Installation toolkit changes

Support for IBM Spectrum Scale Erasure Code Edition. For more information, see Overview of the installation toolkit.
Support for SLES 15 on x86_64 and s390x
Upgrade related enhancements:
- Upgrade flow changes to minimize I/O disruptions. For more information, see Upgrade process flow.
- Enhanced upgrade pre-checks to determine the packages that must be upgraded.
  The versions of the installed packages are compared with the versions in the repository of the packages that you want to upgrade to. In a mixed operating system cluster, the comparison is done with the package repository applicable for the operating system running on the respective nodes.
- Mixed OS support for upgrade
- Enhanced upgrade post-checks to ensure that all packages have been upgraded successfully
- Enhanced dependency checks to ensure dependencies are met for each required package
- Improvements in upgrade messaging to make the upgrade progress clearer to the user

Management API changes

Added the following API commands:

GET: /filesystems/{filesystemName}/filesets/{filesetName}/quotadefaults
POST: /filesystems/{filesystemName}/filesets/{filesetName}/quotadefaults
PUT: filesystems/{filesystemName}/filesets/{filesetName}/quotadefaults
PUT: /filesystems/{filesystemName}/mount
PUT: /filesystems/{filesystemName}/unmount
GET: /filesystems/{filesystemName}/quotadefaults
POST: /filesystems/{filesystemName}/quotadefaults
PUT: /filesystems/{filesystemName}/quotadefaults
GET: /filesystems/{filesystemName}/quotagracedefaults
POST: /filesystems/{filesystemName}/quotagracedefaults

For more information on the API commands, see IBM Spectrum Scale management API endpoints. You can also access the documentation corresponding to each API command from the GUI itself. The API documentation is available in the GUI at: https://<IP address or host name of API server>:<port>/ibm/api/explorer/. For example: https://scalegui.ibm.com:443/ibm/api/explorer.

Management GUI changes

The following changes are made to the GUI:

Improved quota management features. The changes made to the Files > Quotas page are as follows:
- You can now define both capacity and inode quotas for users, user groups, and filesets from the Files > Quotas page.
- Introduced Defaults tab to improve user experience for defining and enabling default quotas for user, group, and fileset.
- Introduced Settings tab. You can perform actions such as enable quota, disable quota, set quota accounting scope, check quota, and set grace time periods.
For more information on the options that are available in the Quotas page, see Quotas.

Added options to configure user authentication for NFS and SMB protocol user access from the Services > File Authentication page. For more information, see File authentication.
To prevent files from being changed or deleted unexpectedly, you can use the integrated archive mode (IAM) mode. You can set this option from the Files > Filesets page while creating the fileset or when you modify it.
You can modify the list of file auditing events to be included in the file audit log by using the edit option that is available against Events logged by file audit logging option that is available under the Properties tab of the detailed view of File Systems page. You can access the detailed view of a file system by selecting View Details option that is available in the Actions menu.
Introduced option in the Files > Information Lifecycle page to define a migration to external pool rule to migrate the data from local pool to external pools like tape or transparent cloud tiering.
Introduced Configure External Authentication option in the Services > GUI > External Authentication page to configure an LDAP-based authentication method on an external authentication server for GUI user access management.
NFS and SMB Performance details can be easily monitored through the newly introduced performance charts and metrics in the NFS Exports and SMB Shares pages.
The Protocols > NFS Exports page now offers effective management of NFS client definitions and support for pseudo paths for NFSv4.
Introduced separate Exports and Client Definition views in the Protocols > NFS Exports page for better manageability of client definitions.
The following navigation menu updates are made in the GUI:
- Removed the Access and Settings menus.
- Introduced Cluster and Support menus.
- Moved File System ACL page from Access menu to Files menu.
- Moved Remote Connections page from Access menu to newly introduced Cluster menu.
- Moved Command Audit Log page from the Access menu to Monitoring menu.
- Moved Event Notifications page from the Settings menu to newly introduced Support menu.
- Moved Diagnostic Data and Call Home pages from the Settings menu to the new Support menu.
- Moved Network page to Cluster menu.

mmces command enhancements

The node suspend command has been extended with the --stop option, which stops all the running CES services.

The node resume command has been extended with the --start option, which starts all the enabled protocols.

For more information, see mmces command.

NFS changes

Increased send queues leading to improved NFS performance.
Statistics counters for NFSv3, NFSv4 protocol versions and RPC queues provided might help identify the probable area of performance bottlenecks.
Memory consumption and Readdir / listing improvements for CES NFS service that runs on protocol nodes.

Object changes: Updated the mmobj command with a new password file. For more information, see mmobj command.

SMB changes

Support for SMB 3.1.1. SMB protocol version 3.1.1 is now supported with IBM Spectrum Scale. Support is automatically enabled on new installations. When upgrading, the support can be enabled by making the config change: /usr/lpp/mmfs/bin/net conf setparm global 'server max protocol' SMB3_11
Note: The limitations still apply. For more information, see SMB limitations.
The SYNCHRONIZE bit in NFSv4 ACLS is now honored by the SMB server. Note that this bit is expected to be set for many file operations on Windows clients. For more information, see NFS V4 ACL Syntax.
FSCTL_SET_ZERO_DATA is now supported on sparse files.

System Health changes

mmhealth command enhancements

The mmhealth command print output form can be selected: The node show, cluster show, and node eventlog commands can now have a color or non-colored output. For more information, see mmhealth command.

The mmhealth command re-syncs health state and events: The node show commands can now re-sync all the health states and events of the current node with the cluster state manager. For more information, see mmhealth command. command.

The mmhealth command displays the unhealthy components: The cluster show commands can now display the unhealthy components. For more information, see mmhealth command.

The mmhealth command displays health state of call home and NVMe components: The node show and cluster show commands can now display the health state for call home and NVMe components. For more information, see mmhealth command.

Identifying ACTIVE THRESHOLD MONITOR role: A pmcollector node that has been granted the ACTIVE THRESHOLD MONITOR role can now be identified. For more information, see Monitoring the health of a node and the Use case 4 in Threshold monitoring use cases.

Call Home changes

Automatic data upload options for call home

Following enhancements have been made to the automatic upload function in callhome:

Event-based uploads

Added more events to the event-based uploads.
Improved the performance and scalability of the uploads.

For more information on event-based uploads, see Event-based uploads.

Heartbeats

This type of upload is done once daily by each call home master node. The call home master nodes sends basic cluster information to ECuRep. For more information on heartbeats, see Heartbeats feature for call home.

Other improvements

Performance improvement for mmcallhome command
Scalability improvements for the scheduled data collection
Call Home packages no longer needed for call home child nodes
Perl-dependencies for gpfs.callhome removed
SLES 15 support available

Watch folder: In IBM Spectrum Scale 5.0.3, watch folder has a clustered watch capability. An entire file system, fileset, or inode space can be watched. For more information, see Introduction to clustered watch.

Documented commands, structures, and subroutines

The following section lists the modifications to the documented commands, structures, and subroutines:

New commands

There are no new commands in this release.

New structures

There are no new structures.

New subroutines

The following subroutine is new:

gpfs_add_filesystem_watch

Changed commands

The following commands are changed:

mmaddnode
mmbuildgpl
mmcallhome
mmces
mmchattr
mmchcluster
mmchconfig
mmchfileset
mmchqos
mmcloudgateway
mmcrcluster
mmcrfileset
mmcrfs
mmdiag
mmdeldisk
mmfsck
mmhealth
mmkeyserv
mmlsattr
mmnetverify
mmobj
mmsdrrestore
mmuserauth
mmwatch
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.

Messages

The following are the new, changed, and deleted messages:

New messages: 6027-1285, 6027-1397, 6027-1965, 6027-3735, 6027-3736, 6027-3737, 6027-3738, 6027-3739, 6027-3740, 6027-3741, 6027-3742, 6027-3743, 6027-3744, 6027-3745, 6027-3746, 6027-3747, 6027-3748, 6027-3749, 6027-3938, 6027-3939, 6027-3940, 6027-3941, 6027-3942, 6027-3943, 6027-4100, 6027-4101, 6027-4102, 6027-4103, 6027-4104, 6027-4105, 6027-4106, 6027-4107, 6027-4108, 6027-4200, 6027-4201, 6027-4202, 6027-4203, 6027-4204, 6027-4205, 6027-4206, and 6027-4207
Changed messages: 6027-2409, 6027-2410, and 6027-2411
Deleted messages: None.

Changes in documentation

List of documentation changes in product guides and respective Knowledge Center sections

The following is a list of documentation changes including changes in topic titles, changes in placement of topics, and deleted topics:

Table 1. List of changes in documentation
Guide	Knowledge center section	List of changes
Concepts, Planning, and Installation Guide	Installing	Moved the following topic under Preparing to install the GPFS software on Linux nodes: For Linux on Z: Changing the kernel settings
Administration Guide	Configuring	Moved the following topic under Configuring and tuning your system for Cloud services: Configuration command execution matrix
Administration Guide	Administering	Added the following topic under Administering AFM: Example of AFM support for kerberos-enabled NFS protocol exports
Problem determination Guide	Monitoring	Changed the location of the following sections under Performance monitoring: Moved the Viewing and analyzing the performance data section under Performance monitoring in the IBM Spectrum Scale: Problem Determination Guide. Moved the Removing non-detectable resource identifiers from the performance monitoring tool database and Performance monitoring limitations sections under Using the performance monitoring tool in the IBM Spectrum Scale: Problem Determination Guide.
		Moved the following topic under Viewing and analyzing the performance data: Performance monitoring using IBM Spectrum Scale GUI.
		Changed the name of following section: Performance monitoring tool overview to Using the performance monitoring tool.
		Restructured the content in the Monitoring, uploading, and sharing collected data with IBM Support section into the following three topics: Space requirements for call home data upload Types of call home data upload Uploading custom files using call home
		Changed the location of the following sections under Troubleshooting: Moved the Failures using the mmpmon command section under Performance issues in the IBM Spectrum Scale: Problem Determination Guide.