Prepare the Management Node¶
These steps prepare the Management Node or xCAT Installation
Install an OS on the Management Node¶
Install one of the supported operating systems on your target management node.
The system requirements for your xCAT management node largely depend on the size of the cluster you plan to manage and the type of provisioning used (diskful, diskless, system clones, etc). The majority of system load comes during cluster provisioning time.
Memory Requirements:
Cluster Size | Memory (GB) |
---|---|
Small (< 16) | 4-6 |
Medium | 6-8 |
Large | > 16 |
Configure the Base OS Repository¶
xCAT uses the apt package manager on Ubuntu Linux distributions to install and resolve dependency packages provided by the base operating system. Follow this section to create the repository for the base operating system on the Management Node
Copy the DVD iso file to
/tmp
on the Management Node:# This example will use ubuntu-18.04-server-ppc64el.iso cp /path/to/ubuntu-18.04-server-ppc64el.iso /tmp
Mount the iso to
/mnt/iso/ubuntu
on the Management Node.mkdir -p /mnt/iso/ubuntu mount -o loop /tmp/ubuntu-18.04-server-ppc64el.iso /mnt/iso/ubuntu
Create an apt repository file
/etc/apt.repos.d/ubuntu18-dvd.repo
that points to the locally mounted iso image from the above step. The file contents should appear as the following:[ubuntu-dvd-server] name=Ubuntu 18.04 Server packages baseurl=file:///mnt/iso/ubuntu/Server enabled=1 gpgcheck=1
Configure the Management Node¶
By setting properties on the Management Node before installing the xCAT software will allow xCAT to automatically configure key attributes in the xCAT site
table during the install.
Ensure a hostname is configured on the management node by issuing the
hostname
command. [It’s recommended to use a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) when setting the hostname]To set the hostname of xcatmn.cluster.com:
hostname xcatmn.cluster.com
Add the hostname to the
/etc/hostname
and/etc/hosts
to persist the hostname on reboot.Reboot or run
service hostname restart
to allow the hostname to take effect and verify the hostname command returns correctly:hostname
hostname -d
- should display the domain
Reduce the risk of the Management Node IP address being lost by setting the interface IP to STATIC in the
/etc/network/interfaces
configuration file.Configure any domain search strings and nameservers using the
resolvconf
command.