IBM Spectrum Scale 5.1

IBM Spectrum Scale 5.1 delivers SDS designed to make storage management simple, efficient, and intelligent at any scale

IBM Spectrum Scale 5.1 offers the following enhancements:

• QoS management allows the storage administrator to specify limits on throughput to limit the resources consumed by any fileset
• Active File Management (AFM) support for both IBM Cloud Object Storage and AWS S3 as an AFM target provides the ability to migrate files between Spectrum Scale and Cloud Object Storage or AWS S3, using all the flexibility and automation of AFM
• Support for NFS 4.1
• IPv6 support for protocol nodes

Spectrum Scale 5.1 builds on the performance and scalability of version 5.0. One added key capability available on all editions is a QoS management function to control the resources consumed by any file set, enhancing the ability of IBM Spectrum Scale to support multiple simultaneous workloads.

The administrator can now set or throttle QoS throughput with maximum IO/s, maximum megabytes, or both. An added ‘class sharing’ feature offers the administrator the ability to control all QoS fileset classes within a storage pool by setting a single special system class. When the special system class is set, it will dynamically balance throughput vs. all user classes in that storage pool by weighing their individual throughput limits. More specifically, if some of the user classes are not using I/O, their share will be given to other classes based on weighted value within the pool, but restricted to the maximum settings on the special system class for class sharing.

AFM has been enhanced to support IBM Cloud Object Storage and AWS S3 as an AFM target, providing the ability to migrate files between Spectrum Scale and Cloud Object Storage or AWS S3 to utilize all the flexibility and automation of AFM.

This release of Spectrum Scale also enhances the features for Server Message Block and NFS protocols, including an upgrade to support NFS 4.1 and IPv6 support for protocol nodes.

Spectrum Scale 5.1 is supported on:

• Power Systems (little endian)
• x86-64 servers
• IBM Z
• IBM LinuxONE enterprise servers

Planned availability date: November 6, 2020