Getting Started

Adding a SwiftStack Gateway to a SwiftStack Cluster is simple process. Install the SwiftStack software onto the Gateway node with the same steps as installing a SwiftStack Swift Node. However during the node ingestion on the controller, choose the role of “SwiftStack Gateway”. Once designated as a Gateway, configuration options will be available.

Gateway Requirements

Hardware

Both Swift and SwiftStack are designed to run on commodity Intel/AMD hardware, so the requirements are dependent on the use case of the gateway server. That said, a minimum hardware profile for a basic 1U gateway would include two disks and two NICs.

• Supported Operating Systems

SwiftStack Nodes support the following Linux operating systems:

• Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial) LTS Server or 18.04 (Bionic) LTS Server 64-bit
• Red Hat 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 7.5, 7.6, 7.7, 7.8, or 7.9 Server 64-bit
• CentOS 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 7.5, 7.6, 7.7, 7.8, or 7.9 Server 64-bit

Note

RHEL/CentOS 7.1 is no longer fully supported; existing 7.1 nodes should be upgraded to a later point release of RHEL/CentOS 7.x.

Note

RHEL/CentOS 6.x is no longer supported; existing 6.x nodes must be upgraded to RHEL/CentOS 7.x.

Note

Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty) or older are no longer supported.

Warning

You cannot run SwiftStack on a desktop or 32-bit versions of any of the above supported operating systems.

• As of July 14, 2014, CentOS/RedHat systems require a patched kernel to fix an NFS server issue; this is available upon request from SwiftStack Support.

• NOTE: Desktop versions and 32-bit versions are not compatible

• Cache disk (block device)

  • Only one disk can be added

  • Minimum of 1 TB

    • Cache disk size depends on the amount of data going through Gateway

  • A Gateway’s throughput is highly dependent on the random IOPs and throughput capacity of the cache block device.

  • May be carved out of a single RAID10 volume group (exact terminology will depend on your RAID controller vendor)

    • SwiftStack recommends exposing a RAID10 “virtual disk” backed by 8 or more 10k RPM or faster HDDs.

• NICs

  • A 1G user-facing NIC and a 10G cluster-facing NIC are a good starting point, however the best configuration will depend your organization's network configuration.

• Additional hardware may be needed depending on the use case and functionality that will be needed from the Gateway.

SwiftStack Controller

SwiftStack Controller On-Premises version at least 2.26.0.3 or SwiftStack Controller As-a-Service is needed.

SwiftStack Cluster

Your Gateway’s cluster should:

• have at least one Swift node
• have a dedicated Swift User (service account) which the Gateway can use to access the Cluster and store data
  • The account will need to have containers defined so the Gateway can map to them
• Be in good health.