XCAT_2.6_Release_Notes

This is the summary of what's new in this release. Or you can go straight to [Download_xCAT].

New Function and Changes in Behavior

• New Commands. See corresponding man pages for details:
  • lsxcatd - List daemon information
  • xcsv - Reformat output of rvitals and similar in CSV format
  • imgcapture - capture image from running node to create a stateless/statelite image - only for linux
• Enhanced Commands. See corresponding man pages for details:
  • tabdump -w - allows selective dump of table rows
  • xdcp - now supports the automatic running of postscripts after files are rsync'd to the nodes. See the xdcp man page and Sync-ing_Config_Files_to_Nodes#postscript_support.
  • makeroutes - added ability to specify routes for compute nodes
  • snmove - Service node manual failover - added support for AIX and enhancements for linux
  • monshow - Now also shows RMC events (in addition to RMC performance info)
• Support for statelite semantics on top of a ramdisk diskless node
• Support for DB2 on RHEL 6
• xCAT now supports the automatic setup of DB2 client on the Service Node during Service Node install.
• Documentation of how to manually fail over an xCAT management node to a backup using a shared disk
• Support on AIX for using a separate NFS server for diskless nodes
• Documented [External_NFS_Server_Support_With_Linux_Statelite]
• HPC integration set up of login nodes - pkg lists, postscripts, etc. for what needs to be installed on/configured for a login node.
• Support for alt_disk install and/or multibos on diskfull AIX nodes
• Exploitation of batched event hierarchical support (attributes on the Condition class that indicate when a batched event file is ready to be processed)
• Documented [Hints_and_Tips_for_Large_Scale_Clusters]
• Support for setting up kdump for linux diskless nodes
• OS dump via iSCSI AIX stateless and statelite nodes. The iscsi dump support is described in section 3 of the "xCAT AIX Diskless Nodes" doc.
• AIX 71B/61N support for p7 & p6
• Added documentation for IB support on system p on RHEL 6
• Ability to set up the compute node's service node as the default gateway by setting networks.gateway] to "<xcatmaster>"
• A new attribute, site.excludenodes, to specify a list of nodes/groups that should always be excluded from all xcat commands (e.g. the list of nodes the currently have hardware problems).
• Enhanced IPv6 support
  • ddns plugin will now push IPv6 /etc/hosts entries into DNS
  • DHCPv6 bindings based on client DUID-UUID for ISC DHCP 4.x (used in RHEL6)
  • Windows, ESXi, and RHEL6 support for using DUID-UUID on the client side
• Per network dynamic dns suffix allows each network to potentially have a different IPv6 suffix. Useful for dual stack and multihomed nodes in dynamic address use (e.g. node1.cluster.example.com, node1.ib.cluster.example.com, node1.ipv6.cluster.example.com is now possible).
• Enhancements to xcatmon/appstatus to monitor the HPC application (GPFS, LAPI and LoadLeveler) status in xCAT cluster. Added some new sample scripts for lcmd and dcmd. See Monitoring HPC application status.
• Partial support for vSphere 5

Limitations and Known Issues

For additional issues, see Tracker Bugs