IBM Support

Linux on IBM Power Systems requirements: IBM Storage Protect Client

Troubleshooting


Problem

Hardware and software requirements for IBM Storage Protect Linux® on IBM Power Systems backup-archive client and API.

 

Cause


 

Resolving The Problem

Hardware and Software Requirements

This document is divided into linked sections. Use the following links to go to the section of the document that you require.


 

Note: IBM Storage Protect backup-archive client support for third-party operating systems, applications, services, and hardware depend on the respective vendor. If a third-party product or version moves into extended support, self-service support, or end-of-life, IBM Storage Protect backup-archive client supports the product or version at the same level as the vendor. See also IBM Support General Guidelines and Limitations - IBM support for software on unsupported operating systems



 

Release 8.1

Note: The product now known as IBM Storage Protect was named IBM Spectrum Protect in levels earlier than 8.1.19. To learn more about the brand change, see IBM Spectrum brand change to IBM Storage.


Hardware
 
System IBM System p or IBM System i, with POWER processors, as supported by Linux distribution
Disk Space 500 MB disk space required to install the client
Note: using the web user interface requires a minimum 4.4 GB disk space (preferred 9 GB disk space)
Memory
 
No extra Random-Access Memory (RAM) is required for product installation. RAM requirements for running the product vary widely and depend on your environment, configuration, and tasks that you fulfill. More RAM might be required to run the product.
Note: using the web user interface requires a minimum 4 GB RAM (preferred 8 GB RAM)

Software
 
Communication Protocol
  • Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), which comes standard with Linux
  • Shared Memory (with IBM Power Systems Tivoli Storage Manager server only)
Operating system Supported operating systems on Linux on IBM Power Systems big endian:
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11 (64 bit)(2)
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6 (64 bit) (2)
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7 (64 bit)
Note:
  1. For release 8.1, only IBM Spectrum Protect API is delivered on Linux on IBM Power Systems big endian.
  2. Due to security reasons, the backup-archive client 8.1.19 and later packages are built with OpenSSL level 3. On RHEL 6, and SLES 11 those rpm packages are not installable. Therefore, beginning with IBM Spectrum Protect backup-archive client level 8.1.19, the operating systems RHEL 6, and SLES 11 are no longer supported, see also APAR IT44180.

Supported operating systems on Linux on IBM Power Systems little endian:
  • SLES 12 (64 bit)
  • SLES 15 (64 bit) (Beginning with 8.1.6)
  • RHEL 7 (64 bit), support started with RHEL 7.1
  • RHEL 8 (64 bit) (Beginning with 8.1.9)
  • RHEL 9 (64 bit) (Beginning with 8.1.15)
  • Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
  • Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
  • Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Beginning with 8.1.6)
  • Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Beginning with 8.1.10)
Note:
  1. For release 8.1, the IBM Storage Protect backup-archive client and API are delivered on Linux on IBM Power Systems little endian.
  2. The operating system kernel in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) versions 7.8 and 8.2 is incompatible with the IBM Spectrum Protect backup-archive client journal-based backup kernel extension. If you are running an earlier version of RHEL with journal-based backups, and then you upgrade to RHEL 7.8 or later, or 8.2 or later, then journal-based backup no longer works. This issue is fixed in the backup-archive client 7.1.8.9 and 8.1.11 on all Linux platforms, see also APAR IT33132
File system For supported file systems, see: File system and ACL support
 
Supported IBM Spectrum Scale (previously known as GPFS) versions:
IBM Spectrum Scale
Or later fix pack level
SLES
Or later service pack and maintenance levels
RHEL
Or later service pack and maintenance levels
Ubuntu
Or later service pack and maintenance levels
IBM Spectrum Scale 4.2.1 (Beginning with 8.1.0) SLES 12.1 RHEL 7.1 Ubuntu 14.04.4(1)
IBM Spectrum Scale 4.2.1.1 (Beginning with 8.1.0) SLES 12.1 RHEL 7.1 Ubuntu 16.04 LTS(2)
IBM Spectrum Scale 4.2.2 (Beginning with 8.1.0) SLES 12.1 RHEL 7.1 --
IBM Spectrum Scale 4.2.3 (Beginning with 8.1.2) SLES 12.1 RHEL 7.1 Ubuntu 14.04.4(1),
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (2)
IBM Spectrum Scale 5.0.0 (Beginning with 8.1.2) SLES 12.1 RHEL 7.1 --
IBM Spectrum Scale 5.0.1 (Beginning with 8.1.6) SLES 12.1 RHEL 7.1 Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
IBM Spectrum Scale 5.0.2 (Beginning with 8.1.6) SLES 12.1 RHEL 7.1 Ubuntu 16.04 LTS,
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
IBM Spectrum Scale 5.0.3 (Beginning with 8.1.7) SLES 12.1, SLES 15 RHEL 7.1 Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
IBM Spectrum Scale 5.0.4 (Beginning with 8.1.8) SLES 15 RHEL 8(3) Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
IBM Spectrum Scale 5.0.5 (Beginning with 8.1.9) SLES 15 RHEL 7.8(4), RHEL 8 Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
IBM Spectrum Scale 5.1.0 (Beginning with 8.1.10) SLES 15.2 RHEL 7.9, RHEL 8.2 Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
IBM Spectrum Scale 5.1.1 (Beginning with 8.1.12) SLES 15.2 RHEL 7.9, RHEL 8.2 Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
IBM Spectrum Scale 5.1.2.1 (Beginning with 8.1.13) SLES 15.3 RHEL 8.4 Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
IBM Spectrum Scale 5.1.3, and 5.1.4 (Beginning with 8.1.15) SLES 15.3 RHEL 8.5 Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
IBM Spectrum Scale 5.1.5 (Beginning with 8.1.15) SLES 15.4 RHEL 8.5 Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
IBM Spectrum Scale 5.1.6 (Beginning with 8.1.17) SLES 15.4 RHEL 8.7 Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
IBM Spectrum Scale 5.1.7 (Beginning with 8.1.19) SLES 15.4 RHEL 8.7
RHEL 9.1
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
IBM Spectrum Scale 5.1.8 (Beginning with 8.1.19) SLES 15.4 RHEL 8.8
RHEL 9.1
--
IBM Spectrum Scale 5.1.9 (Beginning with 8.1.21) SLES 15.5 RHEL 8.8
RHEL 9.2
--
IBM Spectrum Scale 5.2.0 (Beginning with 8.1.22) SLES 15.5 RHEL 8.9
RHEL 9.3
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
(1) On Ubuntu 14.04.4, the IBM Spectrum Scale 4.2.3 requires minimum Kernel 4.2.0-27
(2) On Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, the IBM Spectrum Scale 4.2.3 requires minimum Kernel 4.4.0-31
(3) Beginning with 8.1.9
(4) Beginning with IBM Spectrum Scale 5.0.5.1
Attention: Upgrade to IBM Spectrum Protect backup-archive client 8.1.11 before you upgrade to IBM Spectrum Scale 5.0.5 or later. See Flash: (Linux only) Upgrade to IBM Spectrum Protect backup-archive client 8.1.11 before you upgrade to IBM Spectrum Scale 5.0.5 or later.

More Software
 
The Java™ GUI and web backup-archive client require Java: JRE 7 or JRE 8
Note:
  • Backup-archive client 8.1.0: web client is supported when it is running in a Mozilla Firefox browser.
  • Backup-archive client 8.1.2-8.1.7: you can no longer use the web client to connect to the IBM Spectrum Protect 8.1.2 or later 8.1 server or the 7.1.8 or later 7.1 server. For more information, see Using the web client in the new security environment
  • Backup-archive client 8.1.8 and later: a new web user interface is supported when it is running in a Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome browsers. The TIVsm-WEBGUI.ppc64le.rpm package that is required for the web user interface is supported on RHEL and SLES distributions.
    Note: The web user interface requires the IBM Spectrum Protect 8.1.2 or later 8.1 server or the 7.1.8 or later 7.1 server.
For EXT2/EXT3/XFS access control list (ACL) support, you need the ACL package.
Linux kernel 5.2 or later introduces the Ext 4 casefold feature. This feature is not supported for backup and restore operations with the 8.1 backup-archive client.
The image backup and restore functions for LVM2 volumes require libdevmapper.so V1.01 or later. If the library is at an older level than required or it is not available, image backups for LVM2 volumes fail.
The libdevmapper.so library is distributed with the device mapper packages. On RHEL, the package is called device-mapper-libs and on SLES it is called device-mapper.
IBM Spectrum Scale - Scale Out backup and restore (SOBAR) supported.
Note:
  • On IBM Spectrum Scale 4.2.3, you need at least the 4.2.3.5 fix pack.
  • Installation of IBM Spectrum Protect backup-archive client and IBM Spectrum Protect for Space Management client in the same (matching) release level is required.
  • For IBM Spectrum Protect for Space Management client requirements, see: Linux on IBM Power Systems Little Endian HSM requirements.
The function mmbackup in the IBM Spectrum Scale 5.0.4 or earlier does not work in combination with the IBM Spectrum Protect backup-archive client 8.1.10. For IBM Spectrum Scale 5.0.4, see APAR IJ22017,  for IBM Spectrum Scale 4.2.3 see APAR IJ22035.
No automatic client deployment support on:
  • Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
  • Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
  • Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
  • Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
The IBM Global Security Kit (GSKit) provides libraries and utilities for Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) or the Transport Layer Security (TLS) communication, which is used by IBM Spectrum Protect product components. The GSKit levels included in IBM Spectrum Protect are listed in GSKit levels distributed by IBM Spectrum Protect.



 

End of Support (EOS) releases



 

Note: The LAN-free client also requires IBM Storage Protect for Storage Area Networks (5608-SAN).



 

Client Components Offered

Administrative Backup-archive client Space Management client
(Beginning with 8.1.4)
API
Command line interface Graphical user interface Command line interface Web browser interface Graphical user interface Command line interface Interface
--



 

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Product Synonym

IBM Spectrum Protect;

Document Information

Modified date:
22 March 2024

UID

swg21169963