IBM Spectrum Scale management API

With the IBM Spectrum Scale management API, you can develop scripts to automate labor-intensive cluster management tasks. These APIs provide a useful way to integrate and use the IBM Spectrum Scale system.

The IBM Spectrum Scale management API is a REST-style interface for managing IBM Spectrum Scale cluster resources. It runs on HTTPS and uses JSON syntax to frame data inside HTTP requests and responses. For more information, see Functional overview.

The IBM Spectrum Scale management API implementation is based on GUI stack. GUI server is managing and processing the API requests and commands. The following figure illustrates the architecture of API.

Figure 1. IBM Spectrum Scale management API architecture

The IBM Spectrum Scale management API has the following features:

Reuses the GUI deployment's backend infrastructure, which makes introduction of new API commands easier.
Uses the same role-based access feature that is available to authenticate and authorize the GUI users. No additional configuration is necessary for the API users. However, access to individual REST APIs might be defined at the user group-level with the help of access control lists (ACLs). Users belonging to the specific user group can access the REST APIs based on the privileges that are defined within those ACLs. Every ACL is distinct for a user group. That is, user privileges for individual REST APIs vary for different user groups.
Makes deployment easier as the GUI installation takes care of the basic deployment.
Fixes scalability issues and introduces new features such as filter and field parameters and it supports paging.
Highly scalable and can support large clusters with up to 1000 nodes.
The APIs are driven by the same WebSphere® server and object cache that is used by the IBM Spectrum Scale GUI.

Installing and configuring IBM Spectrum Scale management API

For information about how to configure the IBM Spectrum Scale system to start using the APIs, see Installing and configuring IBM Spectrum Scale management API.

IBM Spectrum Scale management API command reference

For information about the API endpoints, see IBM Spectrum Scale management API endpoints.

You can also access the documentation corresponding to each API endpoint from the GUI itself. The API documentation is available in the GUI at: https://<IP address or host name of API server>:<port>/ibm/api/explorer/. For example, https://scalegui.ibm.com:443/ibm/api/explorer.

The IBM Spectrum Scale management API features

The following topics describe the API features in detail.