xCAT Description
xCAT, or Extreme Cloud Administration Toolkit, is a versatile open-source solution aimed at streamlining the deployment, scaling, and oversight of both bare metal servers and virtual machines. It delivers extensive management functionalities tailored for environments such as high-performance computing clusters, render farms, grids, web farms, online gaming infrastructures, cloud setups, and data centers. Built on a foundation of established system administration practices, xCAT offers a flexible framework that allows system administrators to identify hardware servers, perform remote management tasks, deploy operating systems on physical or virtual machines in both disk and diskless configurations, set up and manage user applications, and execute parallel system management operations. This toolkit is compatible with a range of operating systems, including Red Hat, Ubuntu, SUSE, and CentOS, as well as architectures such as ppc64le, x86_64, and ppc64. Moreover, it supports various management protocols, including IPMI, HMC, FSP, and OpenBMC, which enable seamless remote console access. In addition to its core functionalities, xCAT's extensible nature allows for ongoing enhancements and adaptations to meet the evolving needs of modern IT infrastructures.
xCAT Alternatives
Servers.com by Nexcess delivers hybrid bare metal cloud hosting solutions that give businesses greater control over their infrastructure while maintaining the flexibility needed to grow. Its portfolio includes Scalable Bare Metal for on-demand capacity, Enterprise Bare Metal for customized deployments, AI Compute for GPU-powered workloads, and Managed Kubernetes for containerized applications. The platform is built to accommodate organizations that require reliable performance, security, and predictable infrastructure management. Through a network of data centers across multiple continents, customers can deploy services closer to their users and minimize latency. Businesses in industries such as gaming, financial services, advertising technology, streaming, SaaS, and Web3 rely on the platform to support high-demand operations. The infrastructure is designed to handle traffic spikes, intensive computing requirements, and geographically distributed workloads. Advanced networking capabilities and direct connectivity options help optimize application responsiveness and uptime. Organizations can combine different infrastructure offerings to create environments that align with their operational and budget requirements. By providing scalable and customizable bare metal solutions, Servers.com helps businesses maintain performance while adapting to changing market demands.
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OpenMetal delivers hosted private cloud and bare metal infrastructure for organizations that have outgrown public cloud pricing or need more control than a hyperscaler will give them.
Built on OpenStack and Ceph, our platform gives you a fully managed private cloud without the cost and complexity of building your own from the ground up. You get dedicated hardware, root-level access, and a transparent fixed-cost model so your infrastructure bill stays predictable as your workloads grow.
Need bare metal without the private cloud overhead? Our dedicated bare metal servers deploy in minutes and can run standalone or integrate directly with an OpenMetal private cloud. Same fixed pricing, same dedicated hardware, no shared resources.
OpenMetal is built for engineering teams, DevOps, and infrastructure leads who are done deciphering complex cloud bills and being financially punished for their growth.
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SafeKit
Evidian SafeKit is a robust software solution aimed at achieving high availability for crucial applications across both Windows and Linux systems. This comprehensive tool combines several features, including load balancing, real-time synchronous file replication, automatic failover for applications, and seamless failback after server outages, all packaged within one product. By doing so, it removes the requirement for additional hardware like network load balancers or shared disks, and it also eliminates the need for costly enterprise versions of operating systems and databases. SafeKit's innovative software clustering allows users to establish mirror clusters that ensure real-time data replication and failover, as well as farm clusters that facilitate both load balancing and failover capabilities. Furthermore, it supports advanced configurations like farm plus mirror clusters and active-active clusters, enhancing flexibility and performance. Its unique shared-nothing architecture greatly simplifies the deployment process, making it particularly advantageous for use in remote locations by circumventing the challenges typically associated with shared disk clusters. In summary, SafeKit provides an effective and streamlined solution for maintaining application availability and data integrity across diverse environments.
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Rocks
Rocks is an open-source Linux distribution designed for building computational clusters, grid endpoints, and visualization tiled-display walls with ease for end users. Since its inception in May 2000, the Rocks team has worked to simplify the deployment and management of clusters, focusing on making them easy to deploy, manage, upgrade, and scale effectively. The most recent version, Rocks 7.0, also known as Manzanita, is exclusively a 64-bit release based on CentOS 7.4, incorporating all updates as of December 1, 2017. This distribution comes with a variety of tools, including the Message Passing Interface (MPI), which are essential for converting a collection of computers into a functional cluster. Users can customize their installations by incorporating additional software packages during the installation process using specially provided CDs. Moreover, recent security vulnerabilities known as Spectre and Meltdown impact nearly all hardware, and appropriate mitigations are implemented through operating system updates to enhance security. As a result, Rocks not only facilitates the creation of clusters but also ensures that they remain secure and up-to-date with the latest patches and enhancements.
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Pricing
Pricing Starts At:
Free
Free Version:
Yes
Company Details
Company:
xCAT
Year Founded:
2024
Website:
xcat.org
Media
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Product Details
Platforms
Linux
Types of Training
Training Docs
Customer Support
Online Support
xCAT Features and Options
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