This IBM® Redpaper introduces the IBM Spectrum® Scale Erasure Code Edition (ECE) as a scalable, high-performance data and file management solution. ECE is designed to run on any commodity server that meets the ECE minimum hardware requirements. ECE provides all the functionality, reliability, scalability, and performance of IBM Spectrum Scale with the added benefit of network-dispersed IBM Spectrum Scale RAID, which provides data protection, storage efficiency, and the ability to manage storage in hyperscale environments that are composed from commodity hardware.

In this publication, we explain the benefits of ECE and the use cases where we believe it fits best. We also provide a technical introduction to IBM Spectrum Scale RAID. Next, we explain the key aspects of planning an installation, provide an example of an installation scenario, and describe the key aspects of day-to-day management and a process for problem determination. We conclude with an overview of possible enhancements that are being considered for future versions of IBM Spectrum Scale Erasure Code Edition.

Overall knowledge of IBM Spectrum Scale Erasure Code Edition is critical to planning a successful storage system deployment. This paper is targeted toward technical professionals (consultants, technical support staff, IT Architects, and IT Specialists) who are responsible for delivering cost effective storage solutions. The goal of this paper is to describe the benefits of using IBM Spectrum Scale Erasure Code Edition for the creation of high performing storage systems.

This paper was produced by a team of specialists from around the world working at IBM Redbooks, Poughkeepsie Center.

Bill Owen is a Senior Technical Staff Member with the IBM Spectrum Scale development team, leading the release of Erasure Code Edition. He has worked in various development roles within IBM for over 20 years, and has been a part of the IBM Spectrum Scale team for over 6 years. Before joining IBM, Bill developed and deployed grid management systems for electric utilities. Bill holds Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in Electrical Engineering from New Mexico State University.

Luis Bolinches has been working with IBM Power Systems servers for over 15 years and has been with IBM Spectrum Scale (formerly known as IBM General Parallel File System (IBM GPFS) for over 10 years. He works 50 percent for IBM Lab Services in Nordic where he is the subject matter expert (SME) for HANA on IBM Power Systems, and the other 50 percent is on the IBM Spectrum Scale development team.

Wei Gong is a Senior Software Engineer in IBM responsible for IBM Spectrum Scale development and client adoption. He has over 9 years of development on IBM Spectrum Scale core functions. Wei takes significant time with clients on IBM Spectrum Scale solution design, deployment, and performance turning. Wei has 5 years storage development experience, including virtual machine storage system and storage HBA driver.

Scott Guthridge is a Senior Software Engineer in the IBM Almaden Research Center. He is an original member of the IBM Spectrum Scale RAID and IBM Spectrum Scale ECE development teams, and has been working on these projects for over 11 years. His main contributions are the Disk Hospital, NSPD, and internal mechanisms to ensure product quality. Scott’s active areas of research are methods of achieving high system reliability and adoption of emerging storage technologies.

Nikhil Khandelwhal is a senior engineer with the IBM Spectrum Scale development team. He has over 15 years of storage experience on NAS, disk, and tape storage systems. He has led development and worked in various architecture roles. Nikhil currently is a part of the IBM Spectrum Scale client adoption and cloud teams.

Lin Feng Shen is a Senior Architect for IBM Spectrum Scale RAID (also known as GPFS Native RAID or GNR) technology, supporting Erasure Code Edition (ECE) and Elastic Storage System (ESS). He is one of the original members of the IBM Spectrum Scale RAID and IBM Spectrum Scale ECE development teams, and has been working on these projects for over 10 years. He is responsible for IBM Spectrum Scale RAID roadmap development and the owner of GNR logging and buffer manager components. Lin Feng also has 4 years of Linux experience, working together with IBM Linux Technology Center.

Yu Bing Tang is a staff software engineer in IBM China. He has 11 years of experience for IBM Spectrum Scale RAID and more than 17 years for testing. He holds a Master of Science degree in computer science from Xi Dian University. His areas of expertise include Parallel File System, Software Development, and Software Test.

Jon Terner is a Software Engineer and a new member of IBM Spectrum Scale RAID team working in the United States. He has recently finished his bachelors in Computer Science and Mathematics from Binghamton University, where he focused on distributed systems and virtualization technology.

Rong Zeng is a Senior Software Engineer in the US. He has 20 years of experience in software development. His areas of expertise include distributed computing and software RAID development.

Rajan Mishra is a Software Engineer with the IBM Spectrum Scale Deployment development team. He is responsible for automating the installation of IBM Spectrum Scale component software in a IBM Spectrum Scale environment. He has worked within IBM for over 4 years. Rajan previously held roles within the IBM Platform Computing development teams. He has strong engineering professional skills in Software deployment, Python, Java, PHP, shell scripting, SQL, and Linux.

Thanks to the following people for their contributions to this project:

Larry Coyne
IBM Redbooks®, Tucson Center

Indulis Bernsteins
IBM Global Markets - Systems HW Sales

Everett Benally
William Brown
Zhi Cai
Puneet Chaudhary
John Dorfner
Steve Duersch
Shuo Feng
Brian Herr
Rezaul Islam
Wesley Jones
Mamdouh Khamis
Felipe Knop
John Lewars
Carla Lopez
Christopher Maestas
Frank Mangione
Madhav Ponamgi
Kumaran Rajaram
Roger Strommen
Stephen Tee
Jay Vaddi
Carl Zetie
IBM Systems

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