Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Requirement
Some cluster users require that xCAT saves the hardware inventory such as cpu count, memory size and hard disk size in the xCAT database for easy access. This feature request has been giving lower priority until recently when customers wanted to register baremetal nodes discovered by xCAT to OpenStack cluster. The OpenStack baremetal registration requires that the following attributes be given:
- mac address
- number of cpus
- memory size
- disk size
xCAT has already saved the node's mac address in the mac table. We need to save other information as well in xCAT database.
Basic Idea
When nodes are being discovered by xCAT, there is a script in genesis kernel that collects node information such as mac address in band. We need to add some code there to collect more necessary information. The collected information are sent back to xcatd on the server so that it can be stored in xCAT database.
Implementation
Collecting data
dodiscovery script in xCAT-genesis-script rpm will handle the collection. We'll add code to collect hard disk size since other information are collected already. There are many ways to get hard disk sizes:
- lshw -C disk -short
- cat /proc/partitions
- cat/sys/dev/blocks/sd*/size
- dmesg | grep 'logical blocks'
We choose to use cat /proc/partitions because lshw is not shipped with most of the Linux distros.
After the data collection, the dodiscovery script sends the data to the xcatd on the server that responded its DHCP request. The command sent to the xcatd is called 'findme'.
Saving the data in xCAT DB
A new table will be created for storing this kind of data. It will be named 'hwinv', meaning hardware inventory. The column names will be:
- cputype
- cpucount
- memory
- disksize
- comments
- disable
These attributes will also be added to the node definition so that they will be shown by lsdef command for a node. We can add more inventories in future releases.
Upon receiving the 'findme' command, xCAT will save the data in this new table.
Limitations
The following shows the discovery types and if they support the node hardware inventory data collection for this release.
- switch discovery (yes)
- sequential discovery (yes)
- profiled discovery (?)
- blade discovery (no)
- hpblade discovery (no)
News
- Apr 22, 2016: xCAT 2.11.1 released.
- Mar 11, 2016: xCAT 2.9.3 (AIX only) released.
- Dec 11, 2015: xCAT 2.11 released.
- Nov 11, 2015: xCAT 2.9.2 (AIX only) released.
- Jul 30, 2015: xCAT 2.10 released.
- Jul 30, 2015: xCAT migrates from sourceforge to github
- Jun 26, 2015: xCAT 2.7.9 released.
- Mar 20, 2015: xCAT 2.9.1 released.
- Dec 12, 2014: xCAT 2.9 released.
- Sep 5, 2014: xCAT 2.8.5 released.
- May 23, 2014: xCAT 2.8.4 released.
- Jan 24, 2014: xCAT 2.7.8 released.
- Nov 15, 2013: xCAT 2.8.3 released.
- Jun 26, 2013: xCAT 2.8.2 released.
- May 17, 2013: xCAT 2.7.7 released.
- May 10, 2013: xCAT 2.8.1 released.
- Feb 28, 2013: xCAT 2.8 released.
- Nov 30, 2012: xCAT 2.7.6 released.
- Oct 29, 2012: xCAT 2.7.5 released.
- Aug 27, 2012: xCAT 2.7.4 released.
- Jun 22, 2012: xCAT 2.7.3 released.
- May 25, 2012: xCAT 2.7.2 released.
- Apr 20, 2012: xCAT 2.7.1 released.
- Mar 19, 2012: xCAT 2.7 released.
- Mar 15, 2012: xCAT 2.6.11 released.
- Jan 23, 2012: xCAT 2.6.10 released.
- Nov 15, 2011: xCAT 2.6.9 released.
- Sep 30, 2011: xCAT 2.6.8 released.
- Aug 26, 2011: xCAT 2.6.6 released.
- May 20, 2011: xCAT 2.6 released.
- Feb 14, 2011: Watson plays on Jeopardy and is managed by xCAT!
- xCAT Release Notes Summary
- xCAT OS And Hw Support Matrix
- xCAT Test Environment Summary
History
- Oct 22, 2010: xCAT 2.5 released.
- Apr 30, 2010: xCAT 2.4 is released.
- Oct 31, 2009: xCAT 2.3 released.
xCAT's 10 year anniversary! - Apr 16, 2009: xCAT 2.2 released.
- Oct 31, 2008: xCAT 2.1 released.
- Sep 12, 2008: Support for xCAT 2
can now be purchased! - June 9, 2008: xCAT breaths life into
(at the time) the fastest
supercomputer on the planet - May 30, 2008: xCAT 2.0 for Linux
officially released! - Oct 31, 2007: IBM open sources
xCAT 2.0 to allow collaboration
among all of the xCAT users. - Oct 31, 1999: xCAT 1.0 is born!
xCAT started out as a project in
IBM developed by Egan Ford. It
was quickly adopted by customers
and IBM manufacturing sites to
rapidly deploy clusters.