Table of Contents
- Support for multiple hardware control points
- This feature can be used by several xCAT components and features:
- There are some restrictions in the support for multiple hardware control points:
{{:Design Warning}}
Support for multiple hardware control points
The existing xCAT hardware control structure does not support more than one hardware control point for each node, the multiple hardware control points support is needed in some configuration scenarios, such as the HMC redundancy and FSP redundancy, and the Direct Attach is also requiring to try different methods(fsp-api, ASMI and HMC) before indicating that the operation failed. This mini design will describe how to support multiple hardware control points for each node.
The main idea is to specify comma separated hardware control points with the node attribute ppc.hcp, then xCAT will try the hcps one by one until find a hardware control point that can succeed. If any of the hardware control point fails due to any reason, then sequentially try the next hcp specified in the hcp attribute. If all of the hcps failed, then tell the users why it fails on different hardware control points. When trying the hcps, the type of hcp can be determined by the hardware type of the hcp itself, the hcp has to be defined as a node in xCAT database anyway. Please notice that: if the hcp's type is fsp or bpa, it will run the command through fsp-api firstly; If it succeeds, the command will return; If it fails, the command will try the ASMI method secondly.
This feature can be used by several xCAT components and features:
1. fsp-api and HMC: the fsp-api does not support all necessary features for now, so we need HMC to perform some operations are not supported by fsp-api.
2. The fsp/bpa redundancy support that we plan to implement later this year can take advantage of this solution.
3. This can be treated as a new feature that xCAT can support multiple hardware control points for each node, system p does support two HMCs connected to the FSP/BPA, then xCAT can be used in this configuration scenario with this new feature. I believe this new general feature can be used in some other scenarios such as the blade management module redundancy.
Question: Will performance be a problem if xCAT needs to try the hardware control points one by one?
There are some restrictions in the support for multiple hardware control points:
1.Multiple hardware control points only support for system P machine.
2.For rcons, the value of the node's cons attribute should be set to "multiple"
3.specify comma separated hardware control points with the node attribute ppc.hcp.
NOTE: When running command with noderange, it's required that the hcps' types of the nodes in the noderange are in the same order. Four examples as the following are correct:
node hcp
node1 fsp1,hmc1
node2 fsp2,hmc2
node3 fsp3
node4 fsp4,hmc4
,
node hcp
node1 hmc1,fsp1
node2 hmc2,fsp2
node3 hmc3
node4 hmc4,fsp4
,
node hcp
node1 fsp1,fsp12
node2 fsp2,fsp22
node3 fsp3
node4 fsp4,fsp42
and
node hcp
node1 hmc1,hmc12
node2 hmc2,hmc22
node3 hmc3
node4 hmc4,hmc42
but the following two examples are wrong:
node hcp
node1 fsp1,hmc1
node2 hmc2,fsp2
node3 hmc3
node4 hmc4,fsp4
and
node hcp
node1 hmc1,fsp1
node2 hmc2,fsp2
node3 fsp3
node4 hmc4,fsp4
4.For hierarchy environment, it's required that the service node for one node's hcps should be the same one.
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.