Xen 3.3 Feature: Optimized HVM Video Memory Tracking

From Samuel Thibault:
When having a look at how much CPU time is used when an HVM guest is idle, one can notice that the ioemu process used to permanently take something like 7%. This is because ioemu used to keep checking the content of the HVM video RAM for modifications, because setting up a trap […]

Xen 3.3 Feature: PV-GRUB

From Samuel Thibault:
The traditional way to configure a PV guest is to write in the configuration file the path to the kernel/initrd to be loaded.  However, logically enough, these should be on the PV guest disk image, to allow them to be managed by the distribution installed inside the PV guest.  PyGRUB used to act […]

Xen 3.3 Feature: HVM Device Model Domain

From Samuel Thibault:
To provide HVM domains with virtual hardware, Xen uses a modified version of qemu, ioemu.  It used to run in dom0 as a root process, since it needs to directly access disks and tap network.  That poses both a problem of security, as the qemu code base was not particularly meant to be […]

Xen 3.3 Feature: Stub Domains

From Samuel Thibault:
Domain 0 running a lot of components like physical device drivers, the domain builder, ioemu device models, PyGRUB, etc. has been worrisome from a security point of view, particularly since most of them run as root, and thus breaches there would potentially be disastrous.  It also poses scalability issues since the hypervisor can […]

Xen 3.3 Feature: Shadow 3

Shadow 3 is the next step in the evolution of the shadow pagetable code.  By making the shadow pagetables behave more like a TLB, we take advantage of guest operating system TLB behavior to reduce and coalesce the number of guest pagetable changes that the hypervisor has to translate to the shadow pagetables.  This can […]

Xen 3.3 Feature Details

Xen.org Community:
As part of the Xen 3.3 release, I have asked the various development authors to supply me with information on their new features. Over the next few weeks, I will be posting their overviews  to this  blog to give everyone further information on the features in the new release.

Xen 3.3 DataSheet Proposal

Xen Community:
As with all things in the community, I would like to give everyone a chance to comment on a new document. The upcoming release of Xen 3.3 requires the release of a new 2 page datasheet. Here is a proposed document that I recently wrote - xen33datasheet.pdf. Please send me any of your thoughts.
Note […]

Xen Documentation Assistance Update

I have created a new page on the Xen Wiki where anyone wishing to post change requests to the Xen Documentation can do so: http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/Xen3.xDocumentUpdateProject. If anyone makes any of these changes, please update the Wiki so people know what has been completed and what remains to be updated.

Project Zentific

A new Xen management project has just been posted on the Xen.org Projects Page. The source code will be available soon for anyone interested in working on this project. Screen shots and other information is available at http://www.zentific.com/screenshots.php. For more information, contact Steven Maresca at contact@zentific.com.

Xen Client Initiative Meeting - August 12

The next XCI Project meeting is set for August 12, 2008 from 1 - 2pm EST. Please send me an email if you are interested in joining in. The agenda for this meeting is not yet setup but I will update this blog posting with the agenda in a few days.