9.3 xCAT and CSM co-existence

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If you plan to continue to run your cluster with both xCAT and CSM in parallel, there are some points to be aware of. Here we address some of the most common.

Duplicate commands

Both CSM and xCAT contain commands that perform similar functions and may even have the same name.

Both xCAT and CSM have the rpower command, although the syntax is different. We recommend that you place the CSM commands first and the PATH, as the CSM IBM.HWCTRLRM daemon can interfere with the operation of the xCAT commands that interact with the RSAs.

If you experience problems with the xCAT hardware management commands (rpower, rreset, and rvitals), you may have to use the appropriate CSM replacements or disable the IBM.HWCTRLRM daemon (not recommended).

xCAT has the rcons command while CSM has rconsole, but both perform the same function. If both use conserver (CSM 1.3 always does, xCAT can and usually does), using CSM to manage the conserver configuration should allow rcons and rconsole to co-exist.

Network installation

xCAT and CSM use the same underlying mechanisms (dhcp and PXE) for network installing nodes; however, they manage this slightly differently. Although it is possible to pick and chose between xCAT and CSM for node installation, it requires careful understanding of the two software packages.

In general, if you will be using CSM for node installation, never run any of the xCAT tools for network installation: makedhcp, gendhcp, mkstage, mkks, rinstall, rclone, nodeset, and so on.

If you will be using xCAT for node installation, never run the CSM network installation commands: csmsetupks, installnode, and so on.

Adding nodes

When adding nodes to the cluster, first add the nodes to the xCAT tables, then run xcat2csm -d. This will produce only "delta" output (the information for only the new nodes required to be imported into the CSM node database). Subject to the same modifications as above, this delta nodedef can then be imported into CSM using definenode -f.

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