Linux Clustering With Csm and Gpfs

9.1 xCAT overview

xCAT (Extreme Cluster Administration Toolkit) is a tool kit that can be used for the deployment and administration of Linux clusters. Its features are based on user requirements, and many of its features take advantage of IBM xSeries hardware. The development of xCAT grew out of the desire to automate a lot of the repetitive steps involved in installing and configuring a Linux cluster. The development of xCAT is driven by customer requirements and because xCAT itself is written entirely using scripting languages such as korn shell, perl, and Expect, the administrator can easily modify the scripts if necessary.

xCAT is intended to work mainly with High Performance Computing and Horizontal Scaling clusters.

Additional information on xCAT can be found at the IBM alphaWorks® Web site at:

http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/xCAT/