Xen Cloud Platform Code Update

From Dave Scott:

I’ve refreshed the Xen Cloud Platform (XCP) .isos on xen.org with a new development snapshot (labeled version 0.1.1). XCP is a collaborative effort to build a complete cloud infrastructure platform, complete with a powerful management stack, standards-based APIs, support for multi-tenancy and much more. See: http://www.xen.org/products/cloud_source.html

Since we released the first snapshot (0.1) we’ve had lots of contributions and valuable feedback. Particular thanks to

• Nicira for contributing the openvswitch (enabled by default,
• replaces linux bridging)
• Marathon for contributing patches for FT
• Ahmed Kamal for documenting how XCP consoles work[1]
• Colin Dean for creating a VNC console proxy and web front end[2]
• Alberto Gonzalez Rodriguez for creating a standalone front-end[3]

In this update further highlights are:

• dom0 refreshed to CentOS 5.4
• xen refreshed to 3.4.2
• support for host SMBIOS data to be passed through to VMs
• improvements to experimental PCI passthrough

This update contains hundreds of changesets containing lots and lots of bugfixes and performance improvements, including:

• VM lifecycle queuing deadlock fixed
• rare post-fork() spinning xapi process fixed
• Active Directory authentication fixes
• PV drivers check for magic strings in xenstore removed
• lots of memory ballooning fixes

What’s next:

• more stabilising/ bugfixing
• more hg repositories (storage coming soon)
• prototypes of new features (e.g. stub domains, advanced vhd management)
• aim to release an alpha late Jan/ early Feb

Development continues on the mailing list: xen-api@lists.xensource.com. As always, comments / suggestions / patches welcome!

[1] http://foss-boss.blogspot.com/2010/01/taming-xen-cloud-platform-consoles.html
[2] http://www.xvpsource.org/
[3] http://www.openxencenter.com/