Chapter 2. System Overview; High-Level Architecture - IBM ESS 5000 SC Series Hardware Manual

Chapter 2. System overview

IBM Elastic Storage System 5000 (ESS 5000) is a high-capacity storage system that uses the GPFS file
system. It combines the IBM Elastic Storage System (5105) on the IBM POWER9 architecture with the
IBM Spectrum Scale software, which provides the clustered file system.
ESS 5000 can be configured with the following hardware to create an enterprise-level solution:
• IBM Elastic Storage System I/O node, protocol node, and ESS management server (5105-22E)
• Model 106 (5147-106) or Model 092 (5147-092) expansion enclosures
• 7965-S42 rack

High-level architecture

IBM Spectrum Scale RAID is the most important component of the ESS 5000 software stack. IBM
Spectrum Scale RAID is a software implementation of storage RAID technologies within IBM Spectrum
Scale. It implements sophisticated data placement and error-correction algorithms to deliver high levels
of storage reliability, availability, and performance. Standard GPFS file systems are created from the NSDs
that are defined through IBM Spectrum Scale RAID.
The following figure illustrates the high-level software architecture of the ESS 5000 system:
Figure 1. ESS 5000 high-level software architecture
For more information about the IBM Spectrum Scale RAID features, see IBM Spectrum RAID
Administration Guide in Elastic Storage Server Knowledge Center.
An EMS node in an ESS 5000 cluster provides system management functions. ESS 5000 GUI runs on the
EMS nodes and provides management and health monitoring capabilities. The EMS node also runs a
container with Ansible
configuration, file system creation, and code update. The following figure shows high-level view of the
system management topology:
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Copyright IBM Corp. 2020
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playbooks that can provide orchestration of complex tasks, such as cluster
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