An ECS deployment depends on certain customer-provided infrastructure components that need to be reachable by the ECS system, as shown in Figure 8. Components include:
- DNS server—Domain Name System server or forwarder
- NTP server—Network Time Protocol server
- DHCP server—Server that is only required if you are assigning IP addresses by DHCP
- Authentication providers – Active Directory, LDAP, or Keystone for authentication of users (system administrator, namespace administrator, and object users)
- SMTP server (optional)—Server for use in sending reports from the ECS rack
- Load balancer (optional, but highly recommended)—Load balancer to evenly distribute loads across all nodes
Figure 8. Customer-provided infrastructure
The following sections describe best practices associated with these external services.