XCAT_2.11_Release_Notes

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

  Limitation: You have to use the flag -n for copycds command to indicate the distro name for PowerKVM 3.1 ISO.

New Hardware Support

• IBM Power Systems S822LC support (GCA/GTA)

  • Hardware Discovery / Hardware Control
  • Firmware Update
  • 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
  • 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

• renergy command support for OpenPOWER server

  • Query Power Usage
  • Query temparature

• rflash command support for OpenPOWER server

  • Get Firmware information
  • Execute Firmware update

• 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 xCAT

• xcat-core

  • RHEL/SLES - xcat-core-2.11-linux.tar.bz2
  • Ubuntu - xcat-core-2.11-ubuntu.tar.bz2

• xcat-dep

  • RHEL/SLES - xcat-dep-2.11.tar.bz2 [xcat-dep-201511181550.tar.bz2]
  • Ubuntu - xcat-dep-ubuntu-2.11.tar.bz2 [xcat-dep-ubuntu-201511181553.tar.bz2]

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	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
IBM Power S822LC	PowerKVM3.1

Restrictions and Known Problems

• Issue #471: Firmware Update using xCATs rflash command is not stable enough to select accurate delay time after issuing a reset cold and starting the firmware update on IBM Power S822LC systems. If rflash fails, modify the rflash_delay attribute in site table to adjust the delay time. The default value is 120 seconds and we suggest setting this value to 70 and retry.

• 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"
  

• 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