DB2 Cancun Release: DB2 pureScale environment now supports TCP/IP networks

Previously, a DB2® pureScale® environment supported two networks for low latency, high-speed interconnect communication between DB2 members and cluster caching facilities: remote direct memory access (RDMA) protocol over an InfiniBand (IB) network, and, RDMA protocol over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) network.

Starting in DB2 Cancun Release 10.5.0.4, you can now run the DB2 pureScale Feature on a Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol over Ethernet (TCP/IP) network without special remote direct memory access (RDMA) capable adapters.

No additional hardware, firmware, or software is required to install DB2 pureScale Feature on a TCP/IP network. The only requirement is to have a network that is accessible by all the hosts. All hosts in the instance must use the same type of interconnect, must be able to access each other, and must be on the same subnet. The DB2 pureScale instance also uses a dedicated private network.

You set up your TCP/IP network as you normally would, set up all hosts on the same subnet, and test the host name resolution and connectivity.

Running your DB2 pureScale environment on a TCP/IP network has many advantages including faster cluster setup and the ability to test the DB2 pureScale technology without special hardware requirements. This configuration provides very good performance, and is aimed at workloads with modest data sharing needs. For the most demanding write-intensive data sharing workloads, an RDMA-based network offers the best performance.