I couldn’t agree more with Brian’s sentiment about xCAT. We, RedLine, have been xCAT users, integrators and occasional contributors since the end of IBM’s CSM. We’ve deployed it on numerous vendor platforms and it just works. As a small business in the greater HPC marketplace we have many customers that rely on xCAT and we will need to work with them to identify an alternative should xCAT discontinue. I’ve reached out to the IBM team as well as Jarrod from Lenovo and others in the community. I am very interested in putting together a plan that would continue to provide an open source option that is platform agnostic.
With respect to Jarrod’s comments about using Confluent as a starting point for future development of xCAT, there are a number of considerations. Here are a few. Is Lenovo committed to keeping Confluent open-source Is Lenovo open to integration of features/capabilities of non-Lenovo vendors Governance. Who controls changes to the code base and future development directions Does xCAT remain it’s own project and share code with Confluent or do they become one project There are definitely other considerations, but I just wanted to get a few thoughts out there. My opinion is that Jarrod’s idea is one that should be given significant thought and debate. xCAT2 was, according to everything I’ve read, a complete rewrite of the original xCAT. Therefore, adopting Confluent as the next version is not a bridge too far, in my opinion. I also can’t speak to the original intentions of IBM when xCAT2 was released with respect to multi-vendor support. I can say that as a member of the xCAT community I would like to see the project continue as open source and vendor agnostic. I would really like to hear from anyone that is interested in keeping the project alive. I’m hopeful that we can reach a solution as a community. Best Regards, ---- Don Avart CTO RedLine Performance Solutions, LLC (703) 634-5686 dav...@redlineperf.com > On Sep 21, 2023, at 10:59 AM, Jarrod Johnson <jjohns...@lenovo.com> wrote: > > There are at least some options I've heard discussed, if anyone has feedback: > -Someone to take over the xCAT 2.x codebase as-is, adding some missing stuff > like Ubuntu 20+ support, RHEL9, etc. I don't know that anyone has > volunteered to go all in on all that exactly yet. > > -Try to establish a community around confluent (potentially as 'xCAT 3'). > This may suggest some sort of rebranding and/or governance changes, but > basically starting from confluent instead of xCAT 2 for the xCAT-like > experience. Not precisely xCAT-like but was designed "by one of the > designers of xCAT 2" with a lot of sensibilities preserved. Given that > there's not much in the way of 'backwards compatibility', I'm cautious about > the 'xCAT 3' branding, and while I would be a consistent contributor across > xCAT 2.0 through 2.8 and then confluent, it would technically be a change > from an IBM to Lenovo contributions, which I could see being a challenge. > > -The current default trajectory is an archived project and people having to > decide for themselves what to do next (only 'all-in-one' options that I know > to be cross-platform are Bright and Confluent, if just OS deployment, then I > commonly see Foreman used for diskful, with Warewulf being an option for > mostly diskless scenario). Obviously, I like Confluent best, but of course > I would. > > > From: Brian Joiner <martinitime1...@gmail.com > <mailto:martinitime1...@gmail.com>> > Sent: Thursday, September 21, 2023 9:57 AM > To: xcat-user@lists.sourceforge.net <mailto:xcat-user@lists.sourceforge.net> > <xcat-user@lists.sourceforge.net <mailto:xcat-user@lists.sourceforge.net>> > Subject: [External] Re: [xcat-user] Announcement: xCAT Project End-Of-Life > planned for December 1, 2023 > > This is the saddest thing I've hear in some time. I've had the chance to > support customers with Bright, HP cluster manager, and xCAT. xCAT was by far > the best. > > Thank you for all your work, I hope that a transition can happen! > > Thanks, Brian J > > > > On 9/1/23 11:49 AM, Nathan A Besaw via xCAT-user wrote: >> Mark Gurevich, Peter Wong, and I have been the primary xCAT maintainers for >> the past few years. This year, we have moved on to new roles unrelated to >> xCAT and can no longer continue to support the project. As a result, we plan >> to archive the project on December 1, 2023. xCAT 2.16.5, released on March >> 7, 2023, is our final planned release. >> >> We would consider transitioning responsibility for the project to a new >> group of maintainers if members of the xCAT community can develop a viable >> proposal for future maintenance. >> >> Thank you all for you support of the project over the past 20+ years. >> >> >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> xCAT-user mailing list >> xCAT-user@lists.sourceforge.net <mailto:xCAT-user@lists.sourceforge.net> >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xcat-user > _______________________________________________ > xCAT-user mailing list > xCAT-user@lists.sourceforge.net <mailto:xCAT-user@lists.sourceforge.net> > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xcat-user
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