Daniel Hilst
e3568cf061
The specification had a scenario headed "Known asymmetries between the backends" and several clauses of the form "on Kea ... on ISC ...". A node does not choose its management node's DHCP backend -- Backend.pm picks kea on Ubuntu >= 22.04 and EL >= 10 and isc below -- so every one of those clauses describes a machine that boots on one distro and hangs on the next, written down as though it were a requirement. Each is now decided one way, per the review in VersatusHPC/xcat-internal#175, and the losing side is recorded as work rather than as behaviour. Appendix A lists all 25 decisions with the reason and the side that has to change; appendix B summarises what moved in the document itself. Every scenario also carries a review number, @S-nn, so an issue can name one behaviour instead of a paragraph. The suite follows the specification rather than either implementation: pxe-arch-matrix.conf grows ia64, ppc64 UEFI, x86-64 UEFI HTTP boot, OPAL-v3, QEMU s390x, Etherboot by vendor class alone, an ONIE switch that is not yet a node, and a client that announces nothing at all. It also asks for options 12, 114 and 209, which ISC sends only to a client that asked. netboot-methods.conf is new: one defined node per netboot method, each with its own MAC, plus the ScaleMP vendor class, the node's own name in option 12, and an interface the operator marked *NOIP* that must not be answered. dhcpfixture.sh defines that node matrix, supplies the loaders and URLs, and no longer branches on the backend when deciding what an unknown machine is told to boot. The cases are expected to fail until the implementations are brought into line: the failures are the divergence list, on the wire.
xCAT
xCAT is a toolkit for deployment and administration of clusters of all sizes.
The xCAT sunset was only a quick eclipse
Dear xCAT Community,
The xCAT sunset has changed course. VersatusHPC has been invited to join the xCAT Consortium, and future development will move toward direct upstream contributions coordinated with the Consortium and its existing member companies.
That matters most for Enterprise Linux 10 (EL10). EL10 support is coming to xCAT, restoring a future operating-system path for sites that still rely on xCAT. This is an important change from the previous sunset guidance, where the lack of an EL10 path was one of the strongest reasons to move away from xCAT.
The xCAT Consortium continues to recommend Confluent as the long-term successor to xCAT, and that remains the Consortium position. Users planning new cluster-management deployments should evaluate Confluent and its xCAT comparison documentation.
At the same time, xCAT is no longer sunsetted. The Consortium and participating companies will continue updating xCAT while there is community and user demand for it.
In summary:
- xCAT development is continuing upstream through the Consortium and participating companies.
- Enterprise Linux 10 support is coming.
- Confluent remains the Consortium-recommended successor and migration path.
- xCAT updates will continue while there is community and user demand.
We want to thank the xCAT Consortium and community for keeping this project moving. The sun went behind the moon for a moment, but xCAT is still here.
For more information on Confluent and how to get started, please visit the Confluent: Project Page, Documentation or Confluent vs xCAT comparison.
With thanks,
The xCAT Consortium
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