Confluent

Spec sheet

Purpose

Confluent handles server-cluster bootstrap and day-to-day operations, including OS deployment, hardware control, console management, telemetry, and device onboarding.Read 30 Sep 2026 · xcat2.github.io

Intended users

The documentation recommends installing Confluent directly for most users, especially those without an existing xCAT installation, while users relying on xCAT-exclusive features can run both together.Read 29 Sep 2026 · xcat2.github.io

Deployment

It can provision stateful and stateless images over PXE, HTTP(S) boot, or virtual media, with customization at each phase.Read 30 Sep 2026 · xcat2.github.io

Security

The documentation describes validated TLS for collective, deployment, and hardware-management traffic, TPM2 support for boot-volume protection and persistent node trust, SSH PKI, and Secure Boot support for media and HTTP boot.Read 30 Sep 2026 · xcat2.github.io

License

The project repository states that Confluent is available under the Apache 2.0 license.Read 29 Sep 2026 · github.com

Availability

Collective mode can span one Confluent interface across multiple servers for high availability and large fleets.Read 30 Sep 2026 · xcat2.github.io

Console management

Console management provides multi-user access arbitration, timestamped logging, and VT-aware buffering for reconnects.Read 30 Sep 2026 · xcat2.github.io

Discovery

It can detect generic PXE systems or hardware managers and onboard devices by serial number, MAC address, switch port, or physical location.Read 30 Sep 2026 · xcat2.github.io

Hardware management

It supports power, boot-device selection, BIOS/UEFI/BMC settings, RAID storage controllers, health checks, telemetry, virtual media, and support data through IPMI, Redfish, and vendor plugins.Read 30 Sep 2026 · xcat2.github.io

Installation requirement

A default installation has firewall restrictions that must be adjusted for HTTPS and, depending on deployment method, additional network boot ports.Read 29 Sep 2026 · xcat2.github.io

Interfaces

Users can operate Confluent through Linux commands, the confetty command-line browser, a Python client library, or a REST API over HTTP.Read 30 Sep 2026 · xcat2.github.io

Network topology

It centralizes access to MAC address tables and LLDP information across switches through one interface.Read 30 Sep 2026 · xcat2.github.io

Notable limitation

The documentation recommends installing Confluent directly for most users and describes using it alongside xCAT when xCAT-exclusive features are needed.Read 30 Sep 2026 · xcat2.github.io

Operating systems

The download instructions cover repositories for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux, Ubuntu, and SUSE Linux Enterprise.Read 30 Sep 2026 · xcat2.github.io

Scale

The documentation says Confluent supports clusters from a handful of nodes to many thousands, on x86_64 and aarch64 architectures.Read 29 Sep 2026 · xcat2.github.io

Scale and architecture

It supports clusters from a handful of nodes to many thousands and supports x86_64 (amd64) and aarch64 (arm64).Read 30 Sep 2026 · xcat2.github.io

Supported management server OS

The installation documentation lists Enterprise Linux 8.6 or higher, SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP4 or higher, and Ubuntu 22.04 or 24.04 for installation.Read 29 Sep 2026 · xcat2.github.io

Where Specifiction places it

• Bare Metal Provisioning Software#18 of 287.4