[xcat-user] xCAT Consortium update

[Laurence Horrocks-B. <lho...@oc...>]

Dear xCAT community,

First, we'd like to first start out with an apology, since the consortium's announcement in November, IBM's EoL extension and some smaller communications we haven't updated the mailing list. This is mostly due to the consortium finding it's feet with the project and transitioning the assets; for this we would like to thank IBM and Lenovo for their valued input and support.

To this effect we'd like this mail to serve as an update of where we are and invite the community to ask us questions.

What is the consortium about?

In September 2023 IBM announced it's End of Life plan for xCAT; this spur 'ed conversation within the community and lead to 3 independent companies Megware, OCF and Redline discussing the possibility of combining development resources to continue on the project; as each of the companies had committed to the xCAT project and each also had a vested interest in its continuation. This led to the proposal of approaching IBM to discuss a formation of a consortium to take ownership of the xCAT project whilst also acknowledging that the consortium wanted to focus on the future for cluster management and administration tooling; this also led to further approaching Lenovo to discuss their willingness to contribute confluent to this cause. Both IBM and Lenovo have been fantastic in supporting the consortium and its goals.

What are the consortium's goals?

We have 3 main goals,

- Provide extended maintenance, development, and support for xCAT 2
                - There are no plans to add "new" features the focus is around bug fixing and stability
                - There are no plans to support any operating systems past those that are already supported, i.e. no EL10, no SLES16

- Create the next version cluster management and administration tooling
                - We acknowledge both IBM xCAT and Lenovo Confluent being excellent cluster management tooling in their own rights with hours of committed development being applied to both; the consortium is aiming to take the best features from both projects to develop the next community driven tooling
                - Some details of "where to start" is still being figured out

- Everything has to be free, open and vendor agnostic

What's been going on?

It's been a busy time for the consortium members, Megware, OCF, Redline and our supporting partners IBM and Lenovo; we've been meeting weekly to discuss:

Logistical/Commercial
Agree any transitions and how they will happen.
Contact other stakeholders and asset owners to seek agreement.
Discuss within all commercial entities of the consortium.
Create a new workspace for all members to collaborate in whilst providing everyone equal access to assets.
Finalising a memorandum of understanding between the consortium members to outline responsibilities and mutual goals.

Technical
Receive training on the current xCAT development and maintenance.
Implement testing services and CI pipelines.
Implement a new contribution license agreement system.
Update assets reflecting the new consortium.
Updating xCAT nightly build to include latest fixes and development - https://xcat.org/files/xcat/xcat-core/devel/Linux/core-snap/core-rpms-snap.tar.bz2
Target Summer 2024 for xCAT 2.17 (milestone 53) to include Better EL 9 supports, Support for more secure IPMI ciphers, Initial ARM support.

The future
The consortium is finalising:

- Its decision to rebase Confluent as it's start for the next cluster management and administration tooling.
- The language to continue using?
- This will almost certainly be python.
- What features to port over from xCAT?
- Which configuration management tooling should be included as a base?
- Any Confluent rebase will likely be renamed to respect existing product name and intellectual properties. (Yes, we're looking for names!)

How can you help?

We are looking for community input:

- What are your priorities? What features are you looking for?
- Can you help us bug fix? Document? Create features?
- Do you think we're doing the right thing? What would you do differently?

Let us know on the mailing list, or alternatively 2 of the consortium members are at ISC next week so why not come and talk to us in person?

ISC, Congress Center Hamburg from June 10-13, 2025.

Megware - B30
OCF - G50


Laurence Horrocks-Barlow | Technical Director
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