XCAT

xCAT (Extreme Cloud Administration Toolkit) is open-source distributed computing management software developed by IBM, used for the deployment and administration of Linux or AIX based clusters.

XCAT
Original author(s)	Egan Ford
Developer(s)	Egan Ford, Jarrod Johnson, Bruce Potter, Andy Wray
Initial release	October 31, 1999 (1999-10-31)
Stable release	2.17.0 / November 13, 2024; 8 months ago (2024-11-13)[1]
Repository	github.com/xcat2/xcat-core.git
Written in	Perl, Python, Bash
Operating system	Linux, IBM AIX, Windows
Platform	Cross-platform
Size	5 MB
Available in	English
Type	Distributed computing
License	Eclipse Public License
Website	xcat.org

• Free and open-source software portal

In September 2023 the primary developers of xCAT said that they moved onto other roles and could no longer work on it, asking the community if anyone would like to take over, as otherwise they planned to end-of-life the project on December 1, 2023.^[2] A consortium of companies organized to take over the development,^[3] later releasing version 2.17.^[4]

Toolkit

xCAT can:

• Create and manage diskless clusters
• Install and manage many Linux cluster machines (physical or virtual) in parallel
• 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
• Cloning and imaging Linux and Windows machines

xCAT has specific features designed to take advantage of IBM hardware including:

• Remote Power Control
• Remote POST/BIOS console
• Serial over LAN functions
• Hardware alerts and vitals provided via SNMP and email
• Inventory and hardware management

xCAT achieved recognition in June 2008 for having been used with the IBM Roadrunner, which set a computing speed record at that time.^[5][6] xCAT is the default systems management tool of the IBM Intelligent Cluster solution.

xCAT is sometimes used by Lenovo, along with their own deployment system, Confluent.