Xen is an open-source type-1 hypervisor that has been ported to run on ARM architecture. The port started in 2011 and ARM Holdings joined the Xen Project in 2013. Xen has a small code base, strong security features, and powers many large cloud computing installations. It is widely used in Linux distributions for ARM64 systems.

1. Xen on ARM
Stefano Stabellini - 23 September 2015

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GPLv2
A Linux
Foundation
collaborative
project
a type-1
hypervisor
port to ARM started in Nov 2011
ARM Holding joined Xen Project in 2013
Powers the largest clouds
in production
small
code base
more than 10M
individual users
strong security
process
stable trees
maintained for
years

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Xen Project growth
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Contributors Commits

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Xen on ARM: uniqueness and strengths
● Security
● small surface of attack
● fewer lines of code = fewer bugs
● Isolation, Disaggregation and Partitioning
● No Emulation, No QEMU
● faster and more secure
● Clean Architecture
● good match for ARM
● small code base on ARM (⅙ of Xen x86 code, less than 100K LOC overall)
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Status
Next release, Xen 4.6, ext. the 9th of October
Readiness:
● EFI guest and host support
● ACPI support (Linaro is working on it, targetting later this year)
● 64K and 4K pages support
● new hardware and platform support
● all main features are present
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Strong Performance

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Xen on ARM Availability
All major distros for ARM64 ship with Xen
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Project Raisin
Xen Project’s DevStack

8. OpenStack

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Make Xen the best hypervisor for OpenStack
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Xen and OpenStack
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Xen and OpenStack
Xen via Libvirt is in Group B
● everything works out of the box
● one config option away from the default: LIBVIRT_TYPE=xen
● Tempest runs and all tests pass
● The Xen Project CI-loop is up and running
● checkout http://jenkins.openstack.xenproject.org
● The Xen Project CI-loop has voting rights
Next step: Group A!
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12. Demo

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CentOS Virtualization SIG
Virt “Special Interest Group” members: Xen, oVirt, Docker
Xen and Libvirt are available on CentOS 7 ARM64
● yum install centos-release-xen
● yum install xen libvirt
● reboot
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More information
● http://www.xenproject.org
● Xen on ARM @wiki.xenproject.org http://goo.gl/FKNXe
● Xen on ARM whitepaper http://goo.gl/vWMn7D
● http://lists.xenproject.org/mailman/listinfo/xen-devel
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15. Questions?

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Work better. Live Better.
Citrix
© 2014 Citrix

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Parking Lot

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type-1
hypervisor
GPLv2
“the gears of the cloud”
port to ARM started in Nov 2011
a 10 years old
hypervisor
small code base
10 million
individual users
powers the largest
clouds in production
A Linux Foundation
collaborative project
ARM Holding
joined Xen Project
in Dec 2013
© 2015 Citrix