Announcements

XAPI Toolstack Release Details

admin

admin

— 1 min read

From Dave Scott on xen mailing lists:

We are pleased to announce the open-sourcing of the ‘xapi’ toolstack — as used in the Citrix XenServer product line. The xapi toolstack is licensed under the LGPL v2.1 with a special static linking exception. The toolstack:

  • manages the lifecycle of VMs (installing from templates, running, suspending, migrating, creating snapshots and checkpoints and import/export)
  • binds hosts together into single “Resource Pools”
  • interfaces with heterogeneous storage services through a plugin mechanism
  • manages host and VM networking, including bonding and VLANs
  • records multi-resolution persistent performance statistics
  • generates alerts when performance thresholds are crossed or multipathed storage degrades
  • authenticates users through either PAM or Active Directory
  • supports Role-based access control
  • actively manages VM memory allocations through ballooning
  • supports host software upgrade without VM downtime (“rolling-upgrade”)
  • plans for host failure, performs admission control and automatic VM restart
  • exposes the XenAPI over HTTP/S
  • provides secure tunnelling for VM console traffic
  • includes a Java applet for viewing consoles and a Javascript XenAPI client demo
  • supports a simple plugin mechanism for extension
  • when used with the open-source CIM provider [http://community.citrix.com/display/xs/Kensho] provides a full DMTF CIM API with OVF support

The released code is the current development version (“trunk”) and is under active development. The repositories are here:

http://xenbits.xen.org/xapi/xen-dist-ocaml.hg — scripts and Makefiles to build some external library dependencies
http://xenbits.xen.org/xapi/xen-api-libs.hg — internal libraries (e.g. for talking to xenstore) http://xenbits.xen.org/xapi/xen-api.hg — the toolstack itself

The easiest way to build the code is in a specially-prepared VM, instructions are here:

http://xenbits.xen.org/xapi/install.html

From now on, all development will take place on the xen-api@lists.xensource.com
mailing list. In the future we plan to move relevant content such as documentation, designs, roadmaps etc. onto the main xen.org wiki.

Comments, criticism and contributions are welcome!

The xapi toolstack team

Read more