Prepare the Management Node¶

These steps prepare the Management Node for 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 zypper package manager on SLES 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 SLE-12-Server-DVD-ppc64le-GM-DVD1.iso

Mount the iso to /mnt/iso/sles12 on the Management Node.

mkdir -p /mnt/iso/sles12
mount -o loop /tmp/SLE-12-Server-DVD-ppc64le-GM-DVD1.iso /mnt/iso/sles12

Create a zypper repository file /etc/zypp/repos.d/sles12le-base.repo that points to the locally mounted iso image from the above step. The file contents should appear as the following:
```
[sles-12-le-server]
name=SLES 12 ppc64le Server Packages
baseurl=file:///mnt/iso/sles12/suse
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
```

Set up Network¶

The Management Node IP address should be set to a static IP address.

Modify the ifcfg-<device> file in /etc/sysconfig/network/ and configure a static IP address.