In March, 2011, we released the Xen Cloud Platform (XCP) version 1.0, a fully-featured server virtualization platform based on the Xen hypervisor. In this talk we'll explore: - Xapi, the XenAPI management daemon, written in OCaml; - Cool functionality, such as live VM migration between hosts (with no shared storage); - PCI device passthrough to VMs for native performance; - A new system architecture designed to provide XCP with better security, scalability, performance, and reliability; - Future directions and next year's roadmap. In March, 2011, we released the Xen Cloud Platform (XCP) version 1.0, a fully-featured server virtualization platform based on the Xen hypervisor. XCP ad s additional functionality on top of Xen, such as a management server for ease of use and configurability, storage and network management, and easy integration with cloud orchestration layers like OpenStack and CloudStack. Today, Xen and XCP power the largest clouds in production. In this talk we'll explore: - Xapi, the XenAPI management daemon, written in OCaml; - Cool functionality, such as live VM migration between hosts (with no shared storage); - PCI device passthrough to VMs for native performance; - A new system architecture designed to provide XCP with better security, scalability, performance, and reliability; - Future directions and next year's roadmap.

1. Beyond Xen: A look at XCP
Mike McClurg
mike.mcclurg@citrix.com
@mcclurmc

2. What is XCP?

3. An open source XenServer
● Open source edition of Citrix XenServer
● Contains most of the features of XenServer Platinum
● Only open source components included; no licensing
● Released as stable versions in parallel with XenServer
● Will begin to release periodic “development snapshots”

4. Okay, but what is XCP?
● Full name: Xen Cloud Platform
● Based on Xen hypervisor, Xapi management server
● Distributed as a full OS (based on CentOS dom0)
● Enterprise-ready server virtualization platform
● Supports both OpenStack and CloudStack

5. XCP features
● XCP hosts can be organised as resource pools
● Easy set-up of storage repositories, virtual networking with
Open vSwitch, templates for quick VM installation
● VM suspend/resume, import/export, live migration
● Very good CLI, useful for scripting
● XML-RPC based API for developing applications
● GUIs: OpenXenManager, XenCenter (free-as-in-beer)

6. Porting the XCP toolstack

7. Project Kronos
● Awesome name etymology
● Second moon of Klingon home world
● Greek mythology: Titan, father of Zeus
● Porting XCP's toolstack (xapi server, storage managers, and
related tools) to Debian and Ubuntu
● Currently in Wheezy, first stable release in Ubuntu Precise
● Allows people to use and repackage XCP's xapi to build their
own custom dom0 configuration

8. But what about XCP?!?!
● XCP will still remain a stable, enterprise-ready platform
● Continue to release stable, XenServer pinned versions
● Still committed to providing an enterprise-ready virt. platform
● Now we have multiple ways to make use of Xapi
● Stable releases of XCP proper
● Development preview releases of XCP
● Stable releases of XCP toolstack through OS vendors
● Unstable, development branch of XCP toolstack

9. Next steps: Project Zeus
● Son of Kronos, remember?
● Porting XCP toolstack to Fedora and CentOS
● Targeting Fedora 17, also EPEL for CentOS
● Perhaps SUSE next? Any volunteers?

10. The exciting demo!

11. For more info...
● Go to http://www.xen.org
● XCP source: http://www.github.com/xen-org
● My DevStack: http://www.github.com/mcclurmc/devstack
● xen-api mailing list
● #xen-api on Freenode
● Xen tutorial tomorrow afternoon
● Questions?

12. The exciting lame demo!