XCAT
| Company type | Open-source software |
|---|---|
| Industry | Computer software |
| Founder | IBM |
| Products | Cluster management and deployment toolkit |
| Owner | IBM (original), community and organizations (post-2023) |
xCAT (short for Extreme Cloud Administration Toolkit) is an open-source software solution created by IBM for the management and deployment of computer clusters running on Linux or AIX platforms.
In September 2023, the main contributors to xCAT declared their intention to discontinue the project by December 1, 2023, as they shifted focus to new responsibilities, while encouraging community involvement to continue its development. Following this, a group of organizations took over the maintenance and development efforts, issuing version 2.17 in November 2024.
Toolkit
xCAT facilitates the following capabilities:
- Building and administering diskless cluster environments
- Simultaneous installation and oversight of numerous physical or virtual Linux cluster nodes
- Installation of high-performance computing software suites, including batch processing and parallel computing libraries
- Cloning and imaging for both Linux and Windows operating systems
The toolkit includes IBM-specific functionalities such as:
- Remote control over power management
- Access to remote POST and BIOS consoles
- Serial over LAN support
- Hardware monitoring and alerting through SNMP and email notifications
- Detailed hardware inventory and administration
Significantly, xCAT played a key role in powering the IBM Roadrunner, which achieved a world record in computational speed in 2008. It is also the standard system management tool for the IBM Intelligent Cluster. Furthermore, Lenovo utilizes xCAT in combination with its Confluent deployment platform.