Introducing the Integrated Manager for Lustre software

Software Installation Guide Table of Contents

In this Chapter:

Integrated Manager for Lustre software, when integrated with Linux, aggregates a range of storage hardware into a single Lustre file system that is well proven for delivering fast IO to applications across high-speed network fabrics, such as InfiniBand* and Ethernet.

Lustre is a global, single-namespace file system architecture that allows parallel access by many clients to all the data in the file system across many servers and storage devices. Designed to take advantage of the reliability features of enterprise-class storage hardware, Integrated Manager for Lustre software provides high availability features including redundant servers with storage failover. Metadata and data are stored on separate servers to allow each system to be optimized for different workloads.

A high-availability Lustre file system managed by Integrated Manager for Lustre software requires that your entire storage system configuration and all interfaces comply with the High Availability Configuration Specification presented in this guide.

If you are creating a Lustre file system that will use OpenZFS as the backend, see the guide Lustre Installation and Configuration using Integrated Manager for Lustre software and OpenZFS.

What is Integrated Manager for Lustre software Software?

Integrated Manager for Lustre software greatly simplifies configuring, creating, monitoring, and managing one or more Lustre file systems from either the manager GUI, or the associated command line interface (CLI).

RestAPI plugins can further extend the functionality of ML. Such plugins might include real-time storage monitoring that let you track Lustre file system usage, performance metrics, events, and errors at the Lustre level.

What is Management Mode?

The Integrated Manager for Lustre software lets you create and manage new high-availability (HA) Lustre file systems from its GUI. For each HA file system, the GUI and dashboard let you create, monitor, and manage all servers and their respective targets. The software lets you define failover servers to support HA. RAID-based fault tolerance for storage devices is implemented independent of Integrated Manager for Lustre software. Software RAID (MDRAID) disk discovery is not supported.

To provide robust HA support, Integrated Manager for Lustre software automatically configures Corosync and Pacemaker, and takes advantage of IPMI or PDUs to support server failover. Note that Logical Volume Manager (LVM) is not supported in Management mode, but is supported in Monitor mode.

Note: Managed HA support requires that your entire storage system configuration and all interfaces be compliant with a known configuration. See the High Availability Configuration Specification for more information.

What is Monitor-only Mode?

Monitor-only mode allows you to “discover” a working Lustre file system. Using Integrated Manager for Lustre software, you can then monitor the file system at the Integrated Manager for Lustre software dashboard. All of the charts presented on the manager dashboard to monitor performance and statistics, are also available in monitor-only mode.

Monitor-only mode is for file systems that do not fully conform to the High Availability Configuration Specification. In this situation, the Corosync and Pacemaker configuration modules provided with Integrated Manager for Lustre software are not automatically deployed. This means that Integrated Manager for Lustre software cannot configure the file system for server failover. Note that Logical Volume Manager (LVM) is not supported in Management mode, but is supported in Monitor mode.

The Configuration Page in Monitor-only mode

The Configuration page presented by Integrated Manager for Lustre software is designed primarily to enable designers to create Lustre file systems with server failover capability, but this capability is not supported in monitor-only mode. However, many of the features provided on the Configuration page are also directly useful for monitor-only file systems.

Building a Lustre Storage Solution over a ZFS File System

If your intent is to build a high-availability, Lustre storage solution over an existing ZFS, Integrated Manager for Lustre software supports this configuration. However, the installation and configuration of such a system is not described in this guide. Please see the document: Lustre Installation and Configuration using Integrated Manager for Lustre software and OpenZFS.

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