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/

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