Extreme Cloud Administration Toolkit (xCAT)

Extreme Cloud Administration Toolkit (xCAT) (link resides outside of ibm.com) is an open source scalable distributed computing management and provisioning tool that provides a unified interface for hardware control, discovery, and OS diskful/diskfree deployment. This robust toolkit can be used for the deployment and administration of AIX or Linux clusters. Its features are based on user requirements, and take advantage of IBM System x and Power Systems hardware.

xCAT makes simple clusters easy and complex clusters possible, by making it easy to:

• install an AIX or Linux cluster with utilities for installing many machines in parallel
• manage an AIX or Linux cluster with tools for management and parallel operation
• set up a high-performance computing software stack, including software for batch job submission, parallel libraries, and other software that is useful on a cluster
• create and manage diskless clusters

xCAT works well with the following cluster types:

• HPC: High Performance Computing Physics, Seismic, Computational Fluid Dynamics, Finite Element Analysis, Weather, and other simulations; and Bio-informatic work
• HS: Horizontal Scaling Web farms, etc.
• Administrative: Not a traditional cluster, but a very convenient platform for installing and administering a number of AIX and Linux machines
• Operating Systems: With xCAT's cloning and imaging support, it can be used to rapidly deploy and conveniently manage clusters with compute nodes that run Windows or other operating systems
• Other: xCAT's modular tool kit approach makes it easily adjustable for building any type of cluster