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xCAT makes simple clusters easy and complex clusters possible through the following
features:
Remotely controlling hardware functions, such as power, vitals, inventory, events logs, and
alert processing. xCAT indicates which light path LEDs are lit up remotely.
Managing server consoles remotely via serial console, SOL.
Installing an AIX or Linux cluster with utilities for installing many machines in parallel.
Managing an AIX or Linux cluster with tools for management and parallel operation.
Setting up a high-performance computing software stack, including software for batch job
submission, parallel libraries, and other software that is useful on a cluster.
Creating and managing stateless and diskless clusters.
Figure 1-56 xCAT architecture
xCAT supports both Intel and POWER based architectures, which provide operating system
support for AIX, Linux (RedHat, SuSE and CentOS), and Windows installations. the following
provisioning methods are available:
Local disk
Stateless (via Linux ramdisk support)
iSCSI (Windows and Linux)
xCAT manages a Power 775 cluster by using a hierarchical distribution that is based on
management and service nodes. A single xCAT management node with multiple service
nodes provides boot services to increase scaling (to thousands and up to tens of thousands
of nodes).
The number of nodes and network infrastructure determine the number of Dynamic Host
Configuration Protocol/Trivial File Transfer Protocol/Hypertext Transfer Protocol
(DHCP/TFTP/HTTP) servers that are required for a parallel reboot without
DHCP/TFTP/HTTP timeouts.
Chapter 1. Understanding the IBM Power Systems 775 Cluster
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