New Functions and Changes in Behavior
New Operating System Support
-
Ubuntu 16.04 (ppc64le, x86_64)
- Diskful / Diskless OS deployment
- Install Drivers and Configure Mellanox Infiniband adapters (MLNX_OFED_LINUX-3.2-2 Beta)
-
Ubuntu 14.04.04 (ppc64le, x86_64)
- Diskful / Diskless OS deployment
-
RHELS 6.8 (ppc64, x86_64)
- Diskful / Diskless OS deployment
New Features
-
Docker Support
-
Life-cycle management
Use xCAT to install the docker host and manage your docker containers [doc] -
xCAT inside a container
xCAT is available on the docker hub https://hub.docker.com/u/xcat/ [doc] -
Configure Local Docker Registry
Set up and use a local hosted docker registry [doc]
-
-
New command:
getadapter
[getadapter]Scan the network adapters on the compute nodes to determine the predictable naming of the network interfaces when the OS is installed.
-
Support [get_install_disk]
During OS deployment, xCAT will scan all the available disks and choose the one which has OS installed as the first priority. If there are multiple candidates, use the World Wide Name (WWN) or Device type to sort.
This feature works for RHELS, SLES, Ubuntu, and PowerKVM3.1
-
New site table attribute:
xcatdebugmode
[doc]Enabling
xcatdebugmode
will allow Administrators to get more verbose log during Operating System installation. -
Added
snmp
to the scan methods to theswitchdiscover
command [switchdiscover]The
-s snmp
option toswitchdiscover
command will leverage thesnmpwalk
command to collect switch information. -
BMC IP will be discovered if user did not set it in the pre-defined node
-
For the new installed xCAT, the auditlog will be disabled by default to improve the performance. If you want to enable it, change the site.auditskipcmds attribute.
-
Added a new site attribute
hierarchicalattrs
to aggregate the values from all groups for the specific node attributes.
xCAT Documentation
xCAT documentation is hosted on ReadTheDocs: http://xcat-docs.readthedocs.io/en/2.12.0/index.html
Some highlights to documentation improvements:
- Refined the Mellanox OFED management documentation [link]
- Refined the MTMS-based Hardware Discovery documentation [link]
Download xCAT
-
xcat-core
- RHEL/SLES - xcat-core-2.12-linux.tar.bz2
- Ubuntu - xcat-core-2.12-ubuntu.tar.bz2
-
xcat-dep
- RHEL/SLES - xcat-dep-2.12-linux.tar.bz2
- Ubuntu - xcat-dep-2.12-ubuntu.tar.bz2
-
xCAT currently provides
ipmitool-xcat-1.8.15
for the following Operating systems:- RHEL 7 (ppc64le, ppc64, x86_64)
- RHEL 6 (ppc64, x86_64)
- SLES 12 (ppc64le, x86_64)
- SLES 11 (ppc64, x86_64)
1.8.15 or higher must be installed on an xCAT MN that manages OpenPower machines.
Test Environment
Hardware Platform and Operating Systems which have been verified:
Hardware Platform | Operation System |
---|---|
IBM Power S822LC | RHELS7.2 |
IBM Power S822LC | Ubuntu14.04.3 |
IBM Power S822LC | Ubuntu14.04.4 |
IBM Power S822LC | Ubuntu16.04 |
IBM Power S822LC | SLES12 |
IBM Power S822LC | SLES12 SP1 |
IBM Power 750 | RHELS7.2 |
IBM Power 750 | SLES11 SP4 |
iDataPlex M4 DX360 | RHELS7.2 |
iDataPlex M4 DX360 | SLES11 SP4 |
iDataPlex M4 DX360 | Ubuntu14.04.3 |
iDataPlex M4 DX360 | Ubuntu14.04.4 |
iDataPlex M4 DX360 | Ubuntu16.04 |
iDataPlex M4 DX360 | SLES12 SP1 |
Key Bug Fixes
-
Issue 471 Fix the
rflash
failure against the OpenPOWER server. -
Issue 505 How to install OFED for Infiniband device.
-
Issue 1102 Make new xCAT dependency package
ipmitool-xcat-1.8.15
for Rhels6/7, SLES11/12 and Ubuntu. -
Issue 1103 Issue 1080 Issue 969 Fix the issue to select the correct disk for OS deployment
-
Issue 989 Take back the dhcp logs to /var/log/messages for xCAT management node
-
Issue 942 Fix the issue that rh7.x compute node might lose IP before the reboot.
Restrictions and Known Problems
-
Issue 827 The WWN for the disk will be changed after OS deployment. It only impacts the install disk selection when the target compute node has two or more OS installed.
-
Issue 731 The OS installation and boot message cannot be seen from the rcons for x86_64 kvm virtual machine. You can refer to the workaround in the issue comment.
-
Issue 869 The Ubuntu 14.04.3 diskful provision on x86_64 servers might hang in the following scenarios:
- The node attribute "nfsserver" is set to the hostname of MN
- The "nfsserver" is not set and the node attribute "xcatmaster" is set to the hostname of MN.
Refer to the issue for details and work around.
-
Issue 1090 On OpenPower systems,
rcons
will hang if you open a connection within 1 minute of closing it. See issue for details. -
Issue 1139
genimage ubuntu16.04-ppc64el-netboot-compute
may fail withcannnot create bootstraps for rootimage. Make sure you specified full http mirror path
. This is caused by a behavior change ofdebootstrap
. Remove the previously generated osimage using:rmimage ubuntu16.04-ppc64el-netboot-compute
before runninggenimage
. See the issue for details. -
Issue 1171 On Ubuntu 16.04 xCAT management node, following commands
pping,ppping,pasu,psh,pscp,prsync
do NOT work. Use the workaround which are mentioned in the issue.
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.