New Functions and Changes in Behavior
New Operating System Support
-
RHEL 7.2 LE
- Diskful / Diskless OS deployment
- Install CUDA for NVIDIA GPUs
- Install Drivers and Configure Mellanox Infiniband adapters
-
Ubuntu 14.04.03
- Diskful / Diskless OS deployment
- Install CUDA for NVIDIA GPUs
- Install Drivers and Configure Mellanox Infiniband adapters
-
Ubuntu 15.10
- Diskful OS deployment
- OpenPOWER, x86_64
-
PowerKVM 3.1
- Diskful PowerKVM 3.1 deployment
- KVM virtual machine management (Not Available for ESP)
New Hardware Support
-
IBM Power Systems S822LC support (GCA/GTA)
- Hardware Discovery / Hardware Control
- Firmware Update (Not Available for ESP, see below for work around)
- Diskful / Diskless OS deployment for RHEL 7.2 LE
- Diskful / Diskless OS deployment for Ubuntu 14.04.3
- PowerKVM 3.1 Diskful
- NVIDIA GPU
- Mellanox Infiniband adapter
- HPC kit support
-
IBM Power Systems S812LC support
- Hardware discovery / Hardware control
- Firmware update (Not Available for ESP, see below for work around)
- Diskful / Diskless OS deployment for RHEL 7.2 LE
- Diskful / Diskless OS deployment for Ubuntu 14.04.3
- PowerKVM 3.1 Diskful
-
OpenPOWER Servers
- NeuCloud OpenPOWER
- ZoomNet RedPower
- Basic Hardware Control (rpower, rcons)
- Diskful OS Deployment (Ubuntu/PowerKVM)
New Features
-
NVIDIA GPU Support for OpenPOWER [doc]
- Support installing CUDA Toolkit for diskful and diskless systems
-
Infiniband Support for OpenPOWER [doc]
- Implemented a new OFED install script:
mlnxofed_ib_install.v2
- Support installing Mellanox OFED drivers for diskful and diskless
- Implemented a new OFED install script:
-
xCAT KIT Support for OpenPOWER [doc]
- Support the KIT framework for OpenPOWER Server
- HPC software stack supported using KIT for OpenPOWER Server
-
Add xCAT Troubleshooting Log
- Log output of each xCAT command execution in
/var/log/xcat/commands.log
- Add more debug messages for xcatd
- Add more verbose and debug messages for commands nodeset and makedhcp
- Log output of each xCAT command execution in
-
xCAT Log Classification
- Separate the log xcat from system log to a separated log file
/var/log/xcat/cluster.log
- Support log rotation
- Separate the log xcat from system log to a separated log file
-
RAID Configuration for Power Server [doc]
- Discover all the RAID devices and disks which can be used to create raid array
- Add a genesis runcmd
raidconfig
to configure the raid array for power server which is based oniprconfig
-
Accelerate the genimage process
- Support to use
pigz
to accelerate the process of creating diskless images
- Support to use
-
Add
bmcdiscover
Command [manpage]- Discover the BMCs in a specified IP range
- Support to define the discovered BMC to a xCAT node
-
Enhance the xcatdebugmode
- Output more debug message in the syslog of Management Node
- Output more debug message in the console of Compute Node
- Output more debug message for bootloader grub2
NEW xCAT Documentation
xCAT documentation has been refined and is now hosted at https://xcat-docs.readthedocs.org. Please use the new documentation and open any issues on GitHub. The original documentation is still left around on SourceForge as a reference.
Download Early Ship Program (ESP) Build
-
xcat-core
-
xcat-dep
Test Environment
xCAT dependency package verified with this xCAT release:
Operating Systems which have been verified:
- RHEL 7.2 LE
- Ubuntu 14.04.03
Hardware Platform which have been verified:
- IBM Power Systems S822LC
Restrictions and Known Problems
-
RHEL 7.2 LE is not yet GA so xCAT does not have the GA ISO identifier to add to
copycds
.Work around: Use the
-n
option to specify the name when runningcopycds
:# copycds -n rhels7.2 <path_to_iso_file>.iso
-
Firmware Update using xCAT
rflash
is not available at this timeWork around: Update the firmware directly using ipmitool 1.8.15
-
Issue #71: The package
util-linux
cannot be upgraded to latest version in Ubuntu 14.04.3 diskless systems. The root cause is a dependency of this package has been changed.Work around: Run the
apt-get dist-upgrade
by yourself after doing achroot
into therootimgdir
. -
Issue #274: RHEL 7.2 diskless image cannot be booted up.
Work around: disable (or blacklist) the
nvidiafb
driver by adding to the modprobe.blacklist:# chdef <noderange> -p addkcmdline="modprobe.blacklist=nvidiafb"
-
Issue #236: The function to set the IP address of the BMC using the
rspconfig
for IBM Power System S822LC does not work.Work around: Recycle the power of the server after the IP address has been changed using the
rspconfig
to have the IP take effect. -
Issue #233: Output messages from
rinv
needs to be supported/corrected -
Issue #234: Output messages from
rvitals
need to be supported/corrected -
Issue #398: Install OFED fail for diskful compute node.
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.