netplan configuration for Ubuntu in configeth script

[abhishek-sa1]

Is there any plan for supporting Network configuration using netplan for Ubuntu in configeth script in next release of xCAT?

@Obihoernchen

[samveen]

@abhishek-sa1 Netplan.io is a configuration generator that in turn generates NetworkManager configuration (or for systemd-networkd), and doesn't actually do any network management itself.

As xCAT already supports NetworkManager directly, adding an extra layer of abstraction is a waste of effort and possibly an additional point of failure, in case Netplan's behaviour changes.

Additional reading

On looking into this a bit deeper, I see that there is a very large disconnect between the thought processes of the Redhat organization and the Ubuntu organization.

While Redhat has been pushing for systemd adoption across the Linux ecosystem over the last 12 to 14 years (it was initially developed and deployed in Fedora by then-RH employees), they are not very convinced with the maturity of it's systemd-networkd subsystem as per this RH ticket . Instead they prefer to stick to NetworkManager for RHEL 8 (an even older RedHat originated project).

Conversely, for the cloud, Ubuntu is happier with systemd-networkd and prefers to use systemd-networkd over NetworkManager in cloud server images (via the ubuntu blog).

From a project maintenance perspective, for xCAT to be able to do things correctly, it would be better to stick to NetworkManager as it's well supported across most distributions (including Ubuntu and Debian), and thus not only is the maintenance burden reduced, the possibility of expanding node OS support is better addressed.