All, Would there be interest in an unofficial “birds of a feather” type meeting for xCAT at SC23 to discuss the future of xCAT? I may be able to line up a conference room for folks attending to get together. If there’s interest I assume we can also include a Zoom or Teams conference for those unable to attend. ---- Don Avart CTO RedLine Performance Solutions, LLC (703) 634-5686 dav...@redlineperf.com
> On Sep 21, 2023, at 5:13 PM, Jarrod Johnson <jjohns...@lenovo.com> wrote: > > Yes, we are committed to it being open source ongoing. I won't rule out > proprietary things built on top of it, but at least in all the ways that > exist today and the CLI I don't imagine any changes. Currently, the GUI is > not technically open sourced (though everyone gets the source code, but no > redistribution). I do hope to at least open source our upcoming browser > library that makes writing a webui with all the async behaviors a bit more > trivial (which is what the next WebUI will be written with). > > Yes, non-Lenovo functions are welcome. As of 3.8.1, after testing the redfish > update on a 'generic' openbmc system and Bluefield 3 BMC, the push firmware > updates have been placed in generic. Currently the only non-Lenovo vendor > specific behavior is a bit to deal with a peculiar choice with Dell virtual > media, other things are plain redfish. A target rich area would be the > out-of-band discovery code, since I wager all the major implementations are > capable. I did see one OpenBMC solution that wouldn't really work, but I've > seen other OpenBMC implementations that were workable. Most other stuff is > at least described by standards (uefi settings, firmware updates for example) > and vendors that bother to implement it tend to stick to the standard, so > far. The trickiest thing is 'nodehealth', where redfish provides a > HealthRollup, but I feel like systems rarely use it well enough. Maybe > that's just a motivation to push vendors to use that more consistently if > it's a problem... In any event, configbmc (bmcsetup replacement) uses > standard IPMI, should be easier to extend than the bmcsetup script has been, > and PXE discovery works like it can in xCAT (though without the requirement > to actually boot a Linux anymore, discovery happens on the DHCPDISCOVER > packet in the PXE attempt). So the 'worst case' is as far as we ever bothered > to push xCAT, discovery wise. > > Governance is a matter that can be discussed. Currently I am the arbiter of > pulls, but we can discuss other options. With xCAT when we were still tied > to xCAT, we maintained a Lenovo branch so that I was no longer arbiter of > master, but we still had freedom to release changes without getting them in > master (e.g. SHA256 IPMI support was one that we could drive into Lenovo, but > didn't work hard enough to get into master). The 'lenovobuild' branch in > xcat-core is what I reference, all still open source, just the ability to > snag pull requests even if they don't make it through to main branch on time > for one of our requirements. > > On the last, much depends on what is seen as missing that we want to > continue. Off the top of my head, confluent doesn't push ISC dhcp > configuration (because it has a built in PXE server that can work with either > an uncontrolled DHCP server or in a static only fashion) or ISC BIND (it > still, upon request, helps make /etc/hosts files, but shrugs and considers > dnsmasq's direct use of /etc/hosts as serviceable), or POWER servers or > significant virtualization management. > From: Don Avart <dav...@redlineperf.com <mailto:dav...@redlineperf.com>> > Sent: Thursday, September 21, 2023 1:05 PM > To: xCAT Users Mailing list <xcat-user@lists.sourceforge.net > <mailto:xcat-user@lists.sourceforge.net>> > Subject: Re: [xcat-user] [External] Re: Announcement: xCAT Project > End-Of-Life planned for December 1, 2023 > > 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 <mailto:dav...@redlineperf.com> > >> On Sep 21, 2023, at 10:59 AM, Jarrod Johnson <jjohns...@lenovo.com >> <mailto: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 > > _______________________________________________ > 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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