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XCAT_2.11_ESP_Release_Notes

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Xiaopeng Wang edited this page Dec 10, 2015 · 14 revisions

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

  • 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

  • xCAT Log Classification

    • Separate the log xcat from system log to a separated log file /var/log/xcat/cluster.log
    • Support log rotation

  • 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 on iprconfig

  • Accelerate the genimage process

    • Support to use pigz to accelerate the process of creating diskless images

  • 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

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 running copycds:

     # copycds -n rhels7.2 <path_to_iso_file>.iso

  • Firmware Update using xCAT rflash is not available at this time

    Work 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 a chroot into the rootimgdir.

  • 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

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.
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