CSM lacks collective commands

[fpizzano]

Summary: Another issue with CSM that we have noticed. I assume that this has already been logged, but perhaps worthwhile for LLNL to log as well.

CSM lacks collective commands, such as the ability to specify sierra[100-360] -r y, to make ready a large number of nodes. Without such collective commands, we will have to wrap scripts CSM API binaries, write SQL scripts, etc This may have performance implications as well, if we have to make ready many nodes.

It''s nnclear if we are missing something, or if this functionality indeed doesn''t exist.

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. Problem Report number: 37974

ToDo:

• [x] Investigate if xCAT supports python APIs
• [x] implement a python script of calling an xCAT restAPI in python
• [x] connect that to a CSM API
• [x] have a working demo of using a combination of xCAT python and CSM python APIs together.
• [ ] inform labs of progress in next phone call.

[fpizzano]

Adding @adambertsch @watson6282

[mew2057]

A high level assessment of this feature makes me think this could be a achieved through a multi phase process on the master daemon:

1. Check if xCAT is running on the node.
2. If xCAT is present query the group/range from xcat.
3. Continue to use this generated range in the rest of the API.

I'm not sure if this is an acceptable mechanism as it will likely add a database call to every query with an xCAT range or group. It might be best to limit it just to range and look at xCAT's range specifiers re-implementing them in C++.

[NickyDaB]

@gurevichmark sent me this. posting it here for later reference.

https://xcat-docs.readthedocs.io/en/stable/advanced/restapi/restapi_resource/restapi_reference.html#uri-nodes-noderange-nodels-lists-the-nodes-noderange-cannot-start-with

[NickyDaB]

I read the above link in more detail. seems promising.

[NickyDaB]

More info. For python: https://xcat-docs.readthedocs.io/en/stable/advanced/restapi/restapi_usage/restapi_usage.html#an-example-of-how-to-use-xcat-rest-api-from-python

[NickyDaB]

Example of api in action in python.

https://github.com/xcat2/xcat-core/blob/master/xCAT-server/xCAT-wsapi/xcatws-test.py

[NickyDaB]

@pdlun92

@gurevichmark says we have an old version of xcat

[root@c650mnp02 nbuonar]# lsxcatd -a
Version 2.13.7

still looking into it, but we may need to upgrade to get the noderange support.

[NickyDaB]

[root@c650mnp02 nbuonar]# curl -X GET -k 'https://127.0.0.1/xcatws/nodes/all/nodels?userName=root&userPW=ppslab&pretty=1'
{
   "errorcode":"2",
   "error":"Unspported resource."
}

we should try this command again after we do the xcat upgrade.

[NickyDaB]

@gurevichmark did a test with xcat 2.14.6 and it looks like the commands worked.

[NickyDaB]

@pdlun92 @fpizzano I think we should try to update xcat to test before we tell the labs this will work. but this path still looks good so far.

[NickyDaB]

we updated xcat and made some progress.

I will probably need to talk to @gurevichmark again tomorrow

[NickyDaB]

We have a working example of combining the xCAT restful APIs via python and CSM python APIs to use an xCAT node range in CSM.

[NickyDaB]

Next to do item is to bring this up with the labs on the next phone call and ask them if this is how they plan on implementing the feature.

I think its good because:

1. they said they will be using CSM python APIs
2. they can import xcat python apis very easy.