SC20 Meeting (Session 1): Storage for AI
2020-11-16 11:00 - 12:30 (America/New_York)
The Spectrum Scale user group meets annually at the SC conference. For 2020 the user group will be split into two 90 minute digital sessions. The second session will be on Wednesday Nov 18th, 11 am EST
>> Session 2: What is new in Spectrum Scale 5.1? <<
This session will focus on Storage for AI including a customer case study and a deep dive in new Spectrum Scale features which optimize the analysis of datasets stored in a data lake. Live Q&A will be available.
The session will be hosted by IBM and moderated by the user group.
>> Please register here to join the session. <<
Continental: Deep Thought – An AI Project for Autonomous Driving Development
Continental, a tier-1 automotive supplier, runs a new high-performance cluster based on NVIDIA DGX, IBM Spectrum Scale and IBM ESS to boost autonomous driving development performance. Continental uses this system for deep learning, simulation, virtual data generation and related workloads. The new cluster reduces development time from weeks to hours. Speakers from Continental and the business partner SVA will present business requirements and derived workloads, the Spectrum and ESS implementation, and first operational experience.
https://www.continental.com/en-us/press-/press-releases/continental-supercomputer-nvidia-228624
Data Accelerator for AI and Analytics (DAAA)
This talk focuses on the need of data orchestration in enterprise data pipelines. It provides details about data orchestration and how to address typical challenges that customers face when dealing with large and ever-growing amounts of data for data analytics. While the amount of data increases steadily, AI workloads need to speed up in order to be able to deliver insights and business value in a timely manner. IBM addresses these requirements with the Data Accelerator for AI and Analytics (DAAA), an expertly engineered solution based on new features delivered with Spectrum Scale 5.1. The session will include a demo of a complex proof-of-concept and present the key learnings and results.

SSUG::Digital: 009 - Deep Thought: An AI Project for Autonomous Driving Development
2020-11-16 16:00 - 17:00 (Europe/London) | Digital Event
Continental, a tier-1 automotive supplier, runs a new high-performance cluster based on NVIDIA DGX, IBM Spectrum Scale and IBM ESS to boost autonomous driving development performance. Continental uses this system for deep learning, simulation, virtual data generation and related workloads. The new cluster reduces development time from weeks to hours. Speakers from Continental and the business partner SVA will present business requirements and derived workloads, the Spectrum and ESS implementation, and first operational experience.

Download slides here
Q&A
Did Continental ever look at Spectrum Discover for tagging? Any feedback on pros/cons for its usefulness at Continental?
We did not have a chance to look into Spectrum Discover.
Related material

Continental: Automotive supercomputer
Continental press release

User Group Host: Bill Anderson
Speaker

Speaker NamePhotoBio

David EnenkelDavid Enenkel is the Head of IT Operations at Continental - ADC GmbH. He has over 20 years of IT-Infrastructure experience and moved into the area of ADAS 2,5 years ago. He and his team are supporting the ADC engineers to find and establish feasible IT solutions/services for the specific ADAS demands as well as operating the platforms and data centers. He led the Supercomputer project as the IT project manager and is happy to give an insight into all ups and downs building up such an environment.

Viktor PálViktor Pál is working as a Deep Learning Infrastructure Architect at Continental and is currently also acting as Technical Team Lead. He has more than 14 years of IT Infrastructure experience and started working at Continental two years ago. Viktor and his team are supporting AI development by designing, implementing and operating the environment that enables Deep Learning at Continental. He contributed to the Supercomputer project as a Solution Architect and he will talk about the challenges of AI Infrastructure as Code.

Jochen ZellerJochen is IT Architect at www.sva.de. He has more than 20 years of IT experience, is part of the SVA IT Architects team and technical leader of the Spectrum Scale team. His Spectrum Scale and infrastructure projects span various industries and fields, such as HPC, health care, autonomous driving, banking, insurance, etc. When he is not working with his customers, he sits in his glider and flies away - at least in summer.

SSUG::Digital: 010 - Data Accelerator for Analytics and AI (DAAA)
2020-11-16 17:00 - 18:00 (Europe/London) | Digital Event
This talk focuses on the need of data orchestration in enterprise data pipelines. It provides details about data orchestration and how to address typical challenges that customers face when dealing with large and ever-growing amounts of data for data analytics. While the amount of data increases steadily, AI workloads need to speed up in order to be able to deliver insights and business value in a timely manner. IBM addresses these requirements with the Data Accelerator for AI and Analytics (DAAA), an expertly engineered solution based on new features delivered with Spectrum Scale 5.1. The session will include a demo of a complex proof-of-concept and present the key learnings and results.

Download slides here
Related material

Redpaper: Data Accelerator for Analytics and AI (DAAA)

User Group Host: Bill Anderson
Speakers

Speaker NamePhotoBio

Simon LorenzSimon Lorenz is an IT Architect at IBM Research and Development in Frankfurt, Germany. He joined IBM Germany in 1993 and has held various positions within IBM and IBM Research and Development. During international assignments, he helped to improve fully automated chip factories in Asia and US. Simon joined the IBM Spectrum Scale development team in 2014 and since then worked on: Openstack Swift integration, designing and building System Health and Proactive Services solutions. Since March 2019 he is the world wide leader of the IBM Spectrum Scale Big Data and Analytics team. His role includes designing and building solutions in the area of AI such as the Data Accelerator for AI and Analytics.

Gero SchmidtGero Schmidt is a Software Engineer at IBM Germany Research and Development GmbH in the IBM Spectrum Scale development group.
He joined IBM in 2001 working at the European Storage Competence Center in Mainz, Germany, providing technical presales support for a broad range of IBM storage products with a primary focus on enterprise storage solutions, system performance, and IBM POWER systems. He participated in the product rollout of the IBM System Storage DS6000/DS8000 series, co-authored several IBM Redbooks and has been a frequent speaker at IBM international conferences. In 2015 he joined the storage research group at the IBM Almaden Research Center in California, USA, where he worked on IBM Spectrum Scale, compression of genomic data in next generation sequencing pipelines, and the development of a cloud-native backup solution for containerized applications in Kubernetes/Red Hat OpenShift. In 2018 Gero joined the Big Data & Analytics team in the IBM Spectrum Scale development group.

SC20 Meeting (Session 2): What is new in Spectrum Scale 5.1?
2020-11-18 11:00 - 12:30 (America/New_York)
The Spectrum Scale user group meets annually at the SC conference. For 2020 the user group will be split into two 90 minute digital sessions. The first session will be on Monday Nov 16th, 11 am EST.
>> Session 1: Storage for AI <<
This session will focus on recent enhancements in Spectrum Scale followed by an open discussion. Live Q&A will be available.
The session will be hosted by IBM and moderated by the user group.
>> Please register here to join the session. <<
What is new in Spectrum Scale 5.1?
Spectrum Scale is a highly scalable, high-performance storage solution for file and object storage. IBM continues to enhance Spectrum Scale performance, in response to recent hardware advancements and evolving workloads. This talk will discuss key enhancements delivered with Spectrum Scale 5.1 including Fileset QoS, AFM to object storage, NFSv4.1 support, IPv6 for Cluster Export Services (CES), and integration with ESS 3000 and ESS 5000.
Ask us anything
The second half of this session will be used for an open discussion between the users and IBM. Senior leaders of Spectrum Scale development and program management will be available.

SSUG::Digital: 011 - What is new in Spectrum Scale 5.1?
2020-11-18 16:00 - 17:00 (Europe/London) | Digital Event
Spectrum Scale is a highly scalable, high-performance storage solution for file and object storage. IBM continues to enhance Spectrum Scale performance, in response to recent hardware advancements and evolving workloads. This talk will discuss key enhancements delivered with Spectrum Scale 5.1 including Fileset QoS, AFM to object storage, NFSv4.1 support, IPv6 for Cluster Export Services (CES), and integration with ESS 3000 and ESS 5000.

Download slides here
Related material

Episode 10: Data Accelerator for Analytics and AI (DAAA)
Episode 12: Event driven data management and security using Spectrum Scale Clustered Watch Folder and File Audit Logging
Episode 1: What is new in Spectrum Scale 5.0.5?

User Group Host: Kristy Kallback-Rose
Speaker

Speaker NamePhotoBioSocial connections

Chris MaestasChris is an Executive Architect for IBM File and Object Storage Solutions with over 25 years of experience deploying and designing IT systems for clients in various spaces. He has experience scaling performance and availability with a variety of file systems technologies. He has developed benchmark frameworks to test out systems for reliability and validate research performance data. He also has led global enablement sessions online and face to face where discussing how best to position mature technologies like Spectrum Scale with emerging technologies in Cloud, Object, Container or AI spaces.Twitter: @cdmaestas
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cdmaestas

Ismael Solis MorenoIsmael works in the Spectrum Scale development team in Guadalajara Mexico as a data scientist and performance analyst. He is responsible for evaluating Spectrum Scale's new features and releases performance. Part of his role is to analyze datasets to identify points of performance improvement providing insights to the development teams.LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ismaelsm

Support Webinar: Call Home and New Features and Enhancements in Spectrum Scale 5.1.0 (NA/EU Session)
2020-12-02 11:00 - 12:00 (America/New_York) | Digital Event
IBM Spectrum Scale Webinars are hosted by IBM Spectrum Scale Support to share expertise and knowledge of the Spectrum Scale product, as well as product updates and best practices. This webinar will focus on Call Home in Spectrum Scale, as well as new features and enhancements in Spectrum Scale 5.1.0.
>>> Register here <<<
Agenda
Call Home

Proactive Service / Call Home Benefits​
Health Checker​
Customer Insights​
Outlook

New Features and Enhancements in Spectrum Scale 5.1.0

Platform Updates
Spectrum Scale Core Improvements#
Erasure Code Edition Changes
MAPS Updates
Protocol Improvements
Active File Management (AFM)

Support Webinar: Call Home and New Features and Enhancements in Spectrum Scale 5.1.0 (AP Session)
2020-12-03 16:00 - 17:00 (Asia/Shanghai) | Digital Event

SSUG::Digital: 012 - Lenovo: Spectrum Scale and NVMe Storage (Held in conjunction with CIUK)
2020-12-04 15:30 - 16:00 (Europe/London) | Digital Event
In this SSUG::Digital Expert Talk, we will cover several NVMe-related topics: The Lenovo DSS-G100 is an NVMe-rich server that can be used with Scale’s DAE, DME, and ECE. We will present how to use the TRIM support that has been introduced with Scale 5.0.x on its internal NVMe drives. The NetApp EF600 is an all-NVMe storage subsystem that is triggering the rebirth of the Spectrum Scale “SAN model” with NVMe-over-Fabrics. We will present its architecture, and show how to configure and use it with Spectrum Scale. Finally, we will discuss how the “Unified Namespace” concept of the emerging DAOS storage stack could be used for a namespace integration of this new technology with Spectrum Scale.

Download slides here
Related material

Speaker NamePhotoBio

Michael HenneckeMichael Hennecke is Lenovo’s Chief Technologist for HPC Storage and Networking. He has 27 years of experience in High Performance Computing. Michael has been working with IBM Spectrum Scale since GPFS version 1.1 and is one of the “fathers” of the GPFS Storage Server (GSS), which Lenovo has evolved into the Distributed Storage Solution for IBM Spectrum Scale RAID (DSS-G). He holds a masters degree in physics from Ruhr-Universität Bochum (Germany), and a “Distinguished IT Specialist” certification from The Open Group.

Please note that this talk starts slightly earlier than other events at 15:30 GMT. It is followed by a second expert talk at 16:00 GMT.
The last 2020 SSUG::Digital event will take place on December 4th and is being held in conjunction with Computing Insight UK 2020. The main CIUK conference will take place on 3rd December with the user group event on 4th December.
Held in association with CIUK:

SSUG::Digital: 013 - Event driven data management and security using Spectrum Scale Clustered Watch Folder and File Audit Logging (Held in conjunction with CIUK)
2020-12-04 16:00 - 17:30 (Europe/London) | Digital Event
Spectrum Scale provides various methods for automated data management: The Policy Engine enables rule-based data placement and data management. File Audit Logging enables you to audit file accesses for compliance reasons. The Clustered Watch folder feature enables you to watch and respond to file system activity. This session starts with a customer talk by DESY about their use of the policy engine to automate data-intensive workflows. Then IBM provides an overview of File Audit Logging and Clustered Watch along with use cases and recent architectural enhancements with examples.

Download slides here

Speaker NamePhotoBio

Jürgen Hannappel (DESY)Jürgen Hannappel works in the scientific computing group of the DESY IT department on data management for EuXFEL and Petra III. With a background in particle physics his interests shifted towards computing over time as his place of work moved from CERN and Bonn University to DESY

John Olson (IBM)John Olson is a senior software engineer and the Spectrum Scale Security Architect. He has been with IBM for 21 years and has been working on Spectrum Scale since 2014. Previously, John worked on SoNAS, virtual tape servers and tape controller RAS. John was the lead developer of file audit logging in 5.0.0 and continues to architect the new solutions.

Jake Tick (IBM)Jake is a development manager for Spectrum Scale. In his almost 6 years at IBM, he has been on the Spectrum Scale system test team, FVT test team, and has now moved into management to help lead the file audit logging and watch folder team.

Luis Teran (IBM)Luis, who has been with IBM for about 4 years, is the lead developer for clustered watch folder and file audit logging. Luis started his work with system test on Spectrum Scale then shortly after moved into a development role. Luis now owns development for the file audit logging and cluster watch components.

The last 2020 SSUG::Digital event will take place on December 4th and is being held in conjunction with Computing Insight UK 2020. The main CIUK conference will take place on 3rd December with the user group event on 4th December.
Held in association with CIUK:

SSUG::Digital: 014 - What is new in Spectrum Scale 5.1.1?
2021-05-19 16:00 - 17:00 (Europe/London) | Digital Event
Spectrum Scale is a highly scalable, high-performance storage solution for file and object storage that can be deployed in traditional bare-metal and Cloud environments. IBM continues to enhance Spectrum Scale functionality and performance, in response to recent hardware advancements and evolving workloads. This talk will discuss key enhancements delivered with Spectrum Scale 5.1.1 including installation toolkit enhancements based on Ansible, improved network performance and failover using multiple TCP/IP connections, multi-factor authentication for the management GUI as well as the latest news on Spectrum Scale BDA, ECE and CNSA/CSI.

Download slides here
Related material

Episode 11: What is new in Spectrum Scale 5.1?
Episode 1: What is new in Spectrum Scale 5.0.5?

User Group Host: Simon Thompson
Speaker

Speaker NamePhotoBioSocial connections

Chris MaestasChris is an Executive Architect for IBM File and Object Storage Solutions with over 20 years of experience deploying and designing IT systems for clients in various spaces. He has experience scaling performance and availability with a variety of file systems technologies. He has developed benchmark frameworks to test out systems for reliability and validate research performance data. He also has led global enablement sessions online and face to face where discussing how best to position mature technologies like Spectrum Scale with emerging technologies in Cloud, Object, Container or AI spaces.Twitter: @cdmaestas
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cdmaestas

Ismael Solis MorenoIsmael works in the Spectrum Scale development team in Guadalajara Mexico as a data scientist and performance analyst. He is responsible for evaluating Spectrum Scale new features and releases performance. Part of his role is to analyze datasets to identify points of performance improvement providing insights to the development teams.LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ismaelsm

SSUG::Digital: 015 - Spectrum Scale Container Native Storage Access (CNSA)
2021-06-29 16:00 - 17:30 (Europe/London) | Digital Event
IBM Spectrum Scale Container Native Storage Access (CNSA) allows the deployment of Spectrum Scale in a Red Hat OpenShift cluster. Using a remote mount attached file system, CNSA provides a persistent data store to be accessed by the applications via the IBM Spectrum Scale Container Storage Interface (CSI) driver using Persistent Volumes (PVs). This talk provides a field update on CNSA and a deep dive on technical aspects of this technology.

Download slides here
Q&A
How does the entitlement key work for partners looking to run in their labs for educational purposes?
The way it’s currently set up is that we require entitlement (a purchase) of Data Management Edition (DME) or Data Access Edition (DAE) in order to gain access to the container images. If you are entitled to these editions of Specturm Scale, the container images should be accessible via the entitlement key.
What is with air gap installations?
The switch to IBM Cloud Registry (ICR) improves air gap installations as you can replicate the container images in the same way as you do with your OCP images.for details, please see https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/scalecontainernative?topic=appendix-airgap-setup-network-restricted-red-hat-openshift-container-platform-clusters.
Is it mandatory to have access to IBM Cloud or GitHub site? What if we have a secure site?
There is an air gap install available. You can mirror the registry and pull the images yourself and then serve them internally to your own OpenShift cluster. For GitHub, you would take the command-sets, pre-download the yamls and then use them internally. You would need these all before starting your install on an air gap setup.
Now CNSA only supports mounting one remote filesystem. Is it foreseen to deploy NSD servers in OpenShift pods in the future? Moreover, one worker node can host just one Core pod, because cluster and node files are put in directories mounted from the host in order to make them persistent. If you have a bare metal cluster with, say, static physical machine worker nodes, you are forced to deploy just one Core pod per node even if your physical node can provide computing resources to host multiple Core pods.
We’re looking at ECE and shared nothing local disks. You will first see some of this in the Spectrum Fusion product and then into our CNSA side of things. You’ll also see more filesystems available for remote mount.
Is it foreseen to make multiple Core pods deployable on the same worker node in future releases?
Not anytime soon. We will look into this once we managed to get rid of the kernel module and support FUSE based deployment. We are working on FUSE but have no timeline so far.
What’s the support for other types of containers like? Singularity for example?
Currently we’re sticking with the K8s related environments but we have heard other requests for Singularity.
For CNSA a integration of CSI are great but importantly rolling update is a must.
Agreed. We’re working on rolling upgrade!!!
If you have a fixed number of bare metal worker nodes, and one node fails, it would be useful to start the lost Core pod on one of the remaining worker nodes.
Well, we are infrastructure not an application. With current CNSA (remote mount) we are basically just an interface to the storage cluster. One per pod is fine. Down the line when we add local storage it would be nice to reschedule a failed pod to another node, but unfortunately this does not work either cause it cannot transfer the disks.
When will the Helm charts for CNAS 5.1.1.1 available.?
Meanwhile they are available here:
https://community.ibm.com/community/user/storage/blogs/gero-schmidt1/2021/07/02/helm-charts-ibm-spectrum-scale-container-native
Note that in the future, we’re going to combine CSI/CNSA installs in order to simplify things. At this point, HELM will be less necessary as well.
Related material

Episode 8: Scalable multi-node training for AI workloads on NVIDIA DGX, Red Hat OpenShift and IBM Spectrum Scale
Episode 6: Persistent Storage for Kubernetes and OpenShift environments
Episode 3: Spectrum Scale Strategy Update

User Group Host: Simon Thompson
Speaker

Speaker NamePhotoBio

Laura O. BravermanLaura is a Senior Software Engineer for IBM. She has over 20 years in the Enterprise Storage industry at both IBM and Oracle, with a breadth of experience ranging from system level testing to full stack development to leading software development teams. In her current role, she serves as Scrum Master and developer with the IBM Spectrum Scale Container Native storage access team, bringing Spectrum Scale into Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform to support containerized workloads.

Harald SeippHarald Seipp is a Senior Technical Staff Member with IBM Systems in Germany. He is the founder and Technical Leader of the Center of Excellence for Cloud Storage as part of the IBM EMEA Storage Competence Center. He provides guidance to worldwide IBM teams across organizations, and works with customers and IBM Business Partners across EMEA to create and implement complex storage cloud architectures. In the past 28 years with IBM and other companies he had job roles as Software Developer, Software Development Leader, and Lead Architect for successful software products. Harald was co-inventor of an IBM storage product and holds various patents on storage and networking technology. He is member of the IBM Academy of Technology (AoT), leading the AoT Storage Core team.

Support Webinar: Upgrading IBM Elastic Storage System (ESS) (US Session)
2021-07-14 11:00 - 12:00 (America/New_York) | Digital Event
IBM Spectrum Scale and ESS webinars are hosted by IBM Spectrum Scale and ESS Support to share expertise and knowledge of the Spectrum Scale and ESS products, as well as product updates and best practices.
This webinar focuses on how to upgrade IBM Elastic Storage Server (ESS). Note that our webinars are free-of-charge and held via WebEx.
Audience: ESS users and administrators
>> Register here <<<
For any questions, contact the host.

Support Webinar: Upgrading IBM Elastic Storage System (ESS) (AP Session)
2021-07-15 13:00 - 14:00 (Asia/Shanghai) | Digital Event

Support Webinar: Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) (US Session)
2021-10-20 11:00 - 12:00 (America/New_York) | Digital Event
IBM Spectrum Scale and ESS webinars are hosted by IBM Spectrum Scale and ESS Support to share expertise and knowledge of the Spectrum Scale and ESS products, as well as product updates and best practices.
This webinar focuses on Information Lifecycle Management (ILM).
Note that Support webinars are free-of-charge and held via WebEx.
Audience: Spectrum Scale users and administrators
>> Register here <<<
For any questions, contact the host.

Support Webinar: Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) (AP Session)
2021-10-21 13:00 - 14:00 (Asia/Shanghai) | Digital Event

SC21 Users Group Meeting
2021-11-02 15:00 - 17:00 (America/Chicago) | T-Rex Meeting Center, 911 Washington Ave, St Louis, MO, United States
IBM Spectrum Scale Development and Product Management team will be attending Super Computing 2021 in person. We will be hosting our yearly gathering on Monday, November 15, from 3:00-5:00 PM. This global user meeting provides an opportunity for peer-to-peer learning and interaction with IBM’s technical leadership team on the latest IBM Spectrum Scale roadmaps, latest features, ecosystem, and applications for AI.
This is a free event, but registration in advance is required: https://www.ibm.com/events/event/pages/ibm/nz48hgmb/1581037797007001PJAd.html
IBM Spectrum Scale User Meeting (Face to Face only)
Monday, November 15, 2021
3:00 pm – 5:00 pm CST
T-Rex Meeting Center
911 Washington Ave, 5th Floor, Morgan Stanley Room
St Louis, Missouri

SSUG @CIUK 2021
2021-12-10 10:00 - 12:00 (Europe/London) | Manchester Central, Windmill St, Manchester, M2 3GX, United Kingdom
SSUG will be returning to CIUK for 2021 … our agenda is still to be confirmed, but the plan is to run 10:00 – 12:00 on Friday 10th December.
To attend this user group event, you must be registered to attend CIUK, registration is online at https://www.scd.stfc.ac.uk/Pages/CIUK2021.aspx
Agenda:
10:00 – Welcome, Simon Thompson – Group Chair
10:05 – Spectrum Scale Update, Indulis Bernsteins
10:30 – User Group Matters, Simon Thompson – Group Chair
10:40 – Research Storage at the Crick – Steve Hindmarsh, Francis Crick Institute
11:00 – Erasure code edition and HPE – Daniel Kidger, HPC
11:25 – Spectrum Discover with Spectrum Scale, Indulis Bernsteins
11:45 – Anything else? … otherwise … Wrap up and close, Simon Thompson – Group Chair

SSUG::Digital: 016 - What is new with Spectrum Scale 5.1.2?
2022-01-18 15:00 - 16:00 (Europe/London) | Digital Event
IBM continues to enhance Spectrum Scale functionality and performance, in response to recent hardware advancements and evolving workloads. This talk will discuss key enhancements delivered with Spectrum Scale 5.1.2 including upcoming high performance S3 interface, Spectrum Scale ECE enhancements, AFM enhancements, performance enhancements and latest updates on Spectrum Scale BDA and CNSA/CSI.

Download slides here

User Group Host: Paul Tomlinson
Speakers:

Speaker NamePhotoBioSocial connections

Chris MaestasChris is an Executive Architect for IBM File and Object Storage Solutions with over 25 years of experience deploying and designing IT systems for clients in various spaces. He has experience scaling performance and availability with a variety of file systems technologies. He has developed benchmark frameworks to test out systems for reliability and validate research performance data. He also has led global enablement sessions online and face to face where discussing how best to position mature technologies like Spectrum Scale with emerging technologies in Cloud, Object, Container or AI spaces.Twitter: @cdmaestas
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cdmaestas

Digital User Group Jan 2022 (Day 1 - Jan 18th)
2022-01-18 15:00 - 17:00 (Europe/London) | Digital Event
Restarting for 2022, the SSUG::Digital talks are back with talks over two days.
Day 1 Talk 1: What’s new in Spectrum Scale 5.1.2
IBM continues to enhance Spectrum Scale functionality and performance, in response to recent hardware advancements and evolving workloads. This talk will discuss key enhancements delivered with Spectrum Scale 5.1.2 including upcoming high performance S3 interface, Spectrum Scale ECE enhancements, AFM enhancements, performance enhancements and latest updates on Spectrum Scale BDA and CNSA/CSI.
>> Charts and recordings <<
See >>here<< for sessions of Day 2 – Jan 19th, 2022.
User Group Host: Paul Tomlinson
Speakers:

Speaker NamePhotoBioSocial connections

Chris MaestasChris is an Executive Architect for IBM File and Object Storage Solutions with over 25 years of experience deploying and designing IT systems for clients in various spaces. He has experience scaling performance and availability with a variety of file systems technologies. He has developed benchmark frameworks to test out systems for reliability and validate research performance data. He also has led global enablement sessions online and face to face where discussing how best to position mature technologies like Spectrum Scale with emerging technologies in Cloud, Object, Container or AI spaces.Twitter: @cdmaestas
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cdmaestas

SSUG::Digital: 017 - Multiple Connections over TCP (MCOT)
2022-01-18 16:00 - 17:00 (Europe/London) | Digital Event
Starting with IBM Spectrum Scale 5.1.1, Multiple Connections Over TCP (MCOT) is enabled by default which enhances the IBM Spectrum Scale communication subsystem to establish multiple TCP connections for communication between each pair of Spectrum Scale daemons (mmfsd). Using more connections may improve performance and resiliency, particularly for some bonded configurations which can use more than one physical interface per node with multiple TCP connections. Depending on factors like network speed and number of nodes, the value of the new maxTcpConnsPerNodeConn parameter may need to be adjusted up or down.
Download slides here

Recordings will be made available soon
User Group Host: Paul Tomlinson

Speaker NamePhotoBio

Jay VaddiJay Vaddi is a Storage Performance Engineer at IBM Tucson, AZ. He has been with IBM and the performance team for over five years. His focus is primarily on performance analysis and evaluations of IBM Spectrum Scale and IBM Elastic Storage System products.

SSUG::Digital: 018 - NVIDIA GPU Direct Storage with IBM Spectrum Scale
2022-01-19 15:00 - 16:00 (Europe/London) | Digital Event
With GPUDirect Storage (GDS) NVIDIA has created a data path from the storage directly into the buffer of NVIDIA GPUs. IBM Spectrum Scale is perfectly suited to take advantage of this feature from NVIDIA to further enhance storage performance. This joint session by NVIDIA and IBM development provides GDS overview, highlights how GDS has been integrated with Spectrum Scale and how it can be used to drive higher performance.
Download slides here

User Group Host: Kristy Kallback-Rose
Speakers:

Speaker NamePhotoBio

Ingo MeentsIngo Meents has been working as an architect in IBM Spectrum Scale and its predecessors’ development for more than 10 years. His current focus is on RDMA technologies like Nvidia’s GPU Direct Storage (GDS) to eliminate the IO bottleneck faced by modern AI applications. He is leading the agile team that has made GDS in Spectrum Scale generally available and is working on further enhancements.

Kiran Kumar Modukuri Kiran Modukuri is a Principal software engineer at NVIDIA DGX Platform software team with special focus on accelerating IO pipelines for AI and Machine Learning. He is the Co-architect of NVIDIA MagnumIO GPUDirect Storage and he has technical contributions to Distributed Filesystems, caching and replication technologies over the last 16 years. Kiran has Master's degree in electrical and computer engineering from university of Arizona.

Digital User Group Jan 2022 (Day 2 - Jan 19th)
2022-01-19 15:00 - 17:00 (Europe/London) | Digital Event
Restarting for 2022, the SSUG::Digital talks are back with talks over two days.
Day 2 Talk 1: GPU Direct Storage with Spectrum Scale
With GPUDirect Storage (GDS) Nvidia has created a data path from the storage directly into the buffer of Nvidia GPUs. IBM Spectrum Scale is perfectly suited to take advantage of this feature from Nvidia to further enhance storage performance. This joint session by Nvidia and IBM development provides GDS overview, highlights how GDS has been integrated with Spectrum Scale and how it can be used to drive higher performance.
Day 2 Talk 2: Spectrum Scale performance improvements
Spectrum Scale is a highly scalable, high-performance storage solution for file and object storage. IBM continues to enhance Spectrum Scale performance, in response to recent hardware advancements and evolving workloads. This presentation will discuss performance related improvements in Spectrum Scale 5.X versions focusing on enhancements made in support of AI and HPC use cases, including improvements for IO 500 performance benchmark, improvements to RDMA to select NUMA aware adapters and more.
See >>here<< for sessions of Day 1 – Jan 18th, 2022.
JOIN HERE
User Group Host: Kristy Kallback-Rose
Speakers:

Speaker NamePhotoBio

Ingo MeentsIngo Meents has been working as an architect in IBM Spectrum Scale and its predecessors’ development for more than 10 years. His current focus is on RDMA technologies like Nvidia’s GPU Direct Storage (GDS) to eliminate the IO bottleneck faced by modern AI applications. He is leading the agile team that has made GDS in Spectrum Scale generally available and is working on further enhancements.

John Lewars (IBM)John Lewars is a Senior Technical Staff Member leading performance engineering work in the IBM Spectrum Scale development team. He has been with IBM for over 20 years, working first on several aspects of IBM's largest high performance computing systems, and later on the IBM Spectrum Scale (formerly GPFS) development team. John's work on the Spectrum Scale team includes working with large customer deployments and improving network resiliency, along with co-leading development of the team's first public cloud and container support deliverables.

Jay VaddiJay Vaddi is a Storage Performance Engineer at IBM Tucson, AZ. He has been with IBM and the performance team for over five years. His focus is primarily on performance analysis and evaluations of IBM Spectrum Scale and IBM Elastic Storage System products.

Kiran Kumar Modukuri Kiran Modukuri is a Principal software engineer at NVIDIA DGX Platform software team with special focus on accelerating IO pipelines for AI and Machine Learning. He is the Co-architect of NVIDIA MagnumIO GPUDirect Storage and he has technical contributions to Distributed Filesystems, caching and replication technologies over the last 16 years. Kiran has Master's degree in electrical and computer engineering from university of Arizona.

Pidad D'SouzaPidad D'Souza is a System Architect specializing in performance engineering of IBM Spectrum Scale and IBM POWER systems. He has been with IBM for over 17 years, leading system performance engineering of GPU accelerated systems designed for applications in the fields of AI & HPC. He has presented extensively at several international conferences, and delivered customer workshops and lab sessions.

SSUG::Digital: 019 – Spectrum Scale Performance Improvements
2022-01-19 16:00 - 17:00 (Europe/London) | Digital Event
Spectrum Scale is a highly scalable, high-performance storage solution for file and object storage. IBM continues to enhance Spectrum Scale performance, in response to recent hardware advancements and evolving workloads. This presentation will discuss performance related improvements in Spectrum Scale 5.X versions focusing on enhancements made in support of AI and HPC use cases, including improvements for IO 500 performance benchmark, improvements to RDMA to select NUMA aware adapters and more.
Download slides here

Recordings will be made available soon
User Group Host: Kristy Kallback-Rose
Speakers:

Speaker NamePhotoBio

John LewarsJohn Lewars is a Senior Technical Staff Member leading performance engineering work in the IBM Spectrum Scale development team. He has been with IBM for over 20 years, working first on several aspects of IBM's largest high performance computing systems, and later on the IBM Spectrum Scale (formerly GPFS) development team. John's work on the Spectrum Scale team includes working with large customer deployments and improving network resiliency, along with co-leading development of the team's first public cloud and container support deliverables.

Jay VaddiJay Vaddi is a Storage Performance Engineer at IBM Tucson, AZ. He has been with IBM and the performance team for over five years. His focus is primarily on performance analysis and evaluations of IBM Spectrum Scale and IBM Elastic Storage System products.

Olaf WeiserOlaf works with GPFS for over 15 years now. He started his GPFS career in one of the worlds biggest telecommunication companies as a technical administrator. Since more than 10 years, Olaf is with IBM as storage consultant and performance specialist. Recently, he joined IBM Research and Development and works on enhancements in Spectrum Scale to adopt client and customer's needs in the product.

Pidad D'SouzaPidad D'Souza is a System Architect specializing in performance engineering of IBM Spectrum Scale and IBM POWER systems. He has been with IBM for over 17 years, leading system performance engineering of GPU accelerated systems designed for applications in the fields of AI & HPC. He has presented extensively at several international conferences, and delivered customer workshops and lab sessions.

Support Webinar: HDFS (AP Session)
2022-03-31 10:00 - 11:00 (Asia/Shanghai) | Digital Event
IBM Spectrum Scale and ESS webinars are hosted by IBM Spectrum Scale and ESS Support to share expertise and knowledge of the Spectrum Scale and ESS products, as well as product updates and best practices.
This webinar focuses on HDFS access to data in Spectrum Scale.
Note that Support webinars are free-of-charge and held via WebEx.
Audience: Spectrum Scale users and administrators
>> Register here <<<
For any questions, contact the host.

Support Webinar: HDFS (US Session)
2022-03-31 11:00 - 12:00 (America/New_York) | Digital Event

Spectrum Scale User Meeting at ISC 2022
2022-05-30 14:00 - 17:00 (Europe/Berlin) | Congress Center Hamburg (CCH), Congressplatz 1, Hamburg, 20355, Germany
IBM is organizing a Spectrum Scale User Meeting at ISC 2022. We have an exciting agenda covering user stories, roadmap update, the latest insights into data fabrics, data orchestration and data management architectures, plus access to IBM experts and your peers. We look forward to welcoming you to this event.
Date: Mon, 30. May 2022 – 14:00-17:00 CET Local time | Hall X Room 8 by SVA
Congress Center Hamburg (CCH)
Any and all people entering meeting rooms MUST be registered with an ISC 2022 exhibition pass or conference pass. Please note that registration is only available online and in advance. On-site registration is NOT possible.
The User Meeting is face-to-face only. There is no additional registration required in addition to the general ISC registration.
NDA’s have to be signed when entering the meeting room as roadmap items are discussed. A non-confidential version of the charts will be made available after the event.

14:0014:10WelcomeChristina Orosco (IBM) / Matt Geiser (IBM)

14:1014:35What is new in Spectrum Scale and ESS?Chris Maestas (IBM)

14:3514:55GPUDirect Storage in Spectrum ScaleRalph Würthner (IBM)

14:5515:15Performance UpdateOlaf Weiser (IBM)

15:1515:35- Break -n/a

15:3515:55Not enough money for an all flash HPC storage?
A brief cheating guide.Jochen Zeller (SVA)

15:5516:15Monitoring and serviceability enhancements in Spectrum ScaleMathias Dietz (IBM)

16:1516:35New S3 access for AI and Analytics workloadsUlf Troppens (IBM)

16:3516:55Data orchestration across the global data platformSimon Lorenz (IBM)

16:5517:00Wrap-upUlf Troppens (IBM)

Sponsors:

Spectrum Scale User Group UK meeting 30th June 2022
2022-06-30 09:00 - 17:00 (Europe/London) | IBM Client Center London, 20 York Road, London, SE1 7ND, United Kingdom
Join us at IBM’s new London location for our next user group meeting
This is the current proposed agenda for June’s meeting

9:30 – 10:00
Arrivals and refreshments

10:00 – 10:15
Introductions and committee updates
Paul Tomlinson, Group Chair & Caroline Bradley, Group Secretary

10:15 – 10:50
Strategy Update (IBM)

10:50 – 11:15
New S3 Access for AI and Analytics (IBM)

11:15 – 11:35
NVIDIA GPUDirect Storage with Spectrum Scale

11:35 – 12:00
What’s new in Spectrum Scale

12:00 – 13:00
Buffet Lunch outside The Cube – Including viewings of Mayflower in Immersive Room (Aspen), Quantum Room (Lemon), and AI Cars

13:00 – 13:20
Migration of Spectrum Scale using Atempo

13:20 – 13:40
Spectrum Scale HDFS Update

13:40 – 14:00
Spectrum Scale and Spectrum Discover for Data Management

14:00 – 14:30
Monitoring + Serviceability Enhancements

14:30 – 15:00
Refreshment Break – Viewings of Spot the Robot Dog.

15:00 – 15:20
Supporting Science with Spectrum Scale

15:20 – 15:40
Spectrum Scale on IBM Cloud

15:40 – 16:00
Lenovo Update

16:00 – 16:30
Performance Update

16:30 – 17:00
Challenges, Experiences + Questions Led by Paul Tomlinson, Group Chair

17:00
Close followed by Drinks and Pizza reception

Registration is at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/spectrum-scale-user-group-registration-321290978967

Support Webinar: Cloud Object Storage (US Session)
2022-09-07 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | Digital Event
IBM Spectrum Scale Webinars: Cloud Object Storage
IBM Spectrum Scale Webinars are hosted by IBM Spectrum Scale Support and Development teams to share expertise and knowledge of the Spectrum Scale product, as well as product updates and best practices.
This webinar focuses on Cloud Object Storage in IBM Spectrum Scale: Introduction to AFM

Introduction to AFM to Cloud Object Storage
AFM Cloud Object Storage basics and operation modes
AFM Cloud Object Storage features
Important AFM Cloud Object Storage commands
AFM Cloud Object Storage debugging workflow
Common AFM failures and fixes

Note that the webinars are free-of-charge and held via Webex.
>> Register here <<<
For any questions, contact the host.

Support Webinar: Cloud Object Storage (AP Session)
2022-09-08 11:00 - 12:00 (Asia/Shanghai) | Digital Event

NYC User Meeting 2022
2022-09-20 09:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | NYU Langone Health, 435 East 30th Street, New York, NY, 10016, United States
IBM is organizing a Spectrum Scale User Meeting in New York City. We have an exciting agenda covering user stories, roadmap update, the latest insights into data fabrics, data orchestration and data management architectures, plus access to IBM experts and your peers. We look forward to welcoming you to this event.
Date: September 20, 2022
Location: New York City
The User Meeting is face-to-face only and free of charge.
Attendees must register prior the event. Please register >> here <<.
8:30 9:00 Registration and Morning Coffee
9:00 9:10 Welcome
9:10 9:30 Strategy Update
9:30 9:50 What is new in Spectrum Scale?
9:50 10:10 What is new in ESS?
10:10 10:30 Customer Talk - Albert Einstein College of Medicine
10:30 11:00 Coffee and Networking
11:00 11:20 Container Update
11:20 11:40 New S3 access for AI and Analytics
11:40 12:00 Support for GPUDirect Storage
12:00 12:20 Customer Talk - NYU Langone
12:20 13:20 Lunch and Networking
13:20 13:40 Spectrum Fusion
13:40 14:00 Spectrum Scale on IBM Cloud
14:00 14:20 Customer Talk - New York Genome Center
14:20 14:40 Spectrum Scale & ESS Technical Support Update
14:40 15:10 Coffee and Networking
15:10 15:30 Monitoring and serviceability enhancements in Spectrum Scale
15:30 16:10 Technical Deep Dive - Performance Update
16:10 16:40 Open Discussion
16:40 16:45 Wrap-up
Starting 17:00 Social Event
