I’m happy to announce that XCP 1.5 Beta is available! This release comes with a number of new features, most notably the Xen 4.1 hypervisor. Please go to the downloads page to download and test the beta release. If you would like to report a possible bug, please email the xen-api mailing list with the subject “XCP 1.5 BETA BUG: <subject>” (and see this for a list of bug reporting guidelines for the Xen community).
Host Architectural Improvements. XCP 1.5 now runs on the Xen 4.1 hypervisor, provides GPT support and a smaller, more scalable Dom0. GPU Pass-Through. Enables a physical GPU to be assigned to a VM providing high-end graphics. Increased Performance and Scale. Supported limits have been increased to 1 TB memory for XCP hosts, and up to 16 virtual processors and 128 GB virtual memory for VMs. Improved XCP Tools with smaller footprint. Networking Improvements. Open vSwitch is now the default networking stack in XCP 1.5 and now provides formal support for Active-Backup NIC bonding. SR-IOV Improvements. Improved scalability and certification with the SR-IOV Test Kit. Experimental SR-IOV with XenMotion support with Solarflare SR-IOV adapters. Integrated Site Recovery (Disaster Recovery). Remote data replication between storage arrays with fast recovery and failback capabilities. Integrated Site Recovery works with any iSCSI or Hardware HBA storage repository. Virtual Appliance Support (vApp). Ability to create multi-VM and boot sequenced virtual appliances (vApps) that integrate with Integrated Site Recovery and High Availability. vApps can be easily imported and exported using the Open Virtualization Format (OVF) standard. VM Import & Export Improvements. Full support for VM disk and OVF appliance imports directly from XenCenter with the ability to change VM parameters (virtual processor, virtual memory, virtual interfaces, and target storage repository) with the Import wizard. Full OVF import support for XCP, XenConvert and VMware. Enhanced Guest OS Support. Support for Ubuntu 10.04 (32/64-bit). Updated support for Debian Squeeze 6.0 64-bit, Oracle Enterprise Linux 6.0 (32/64-bit) and SLES 10 SP4 (32/64-bit). Experimental VM templates for CentOS 6.0 (32/64-bit), Ubuntu 10.10 (32/64-bit) and Solaris 10.
Note that XCP 1.5 is the open source edition of Citrix XenServer 6.0.
Posted in Cloud Xen, XCP, Xen-API.
Tagged with Beta, XCP.
By Mike McClurg – February 14, 2012
Just a quick reminder that it is only 4 weeks to the Oracle hosted Xen Hackathon in Santa Clara, CA, USA (March 6-8). More than half of the available spaces have gone.
What is a Xen Hackathon
The aim of the Hackathon is to give developers the opportunity to meet face to face to discuss development, coordinate, write code and collaborate with other developers as well as allowing everyone to put names with faces. People working on documentation and other aspects of Xen, XCP, XenARM and related projects are also welcome.
There is no registration fee. However as an attendee you will need to cover your own travel, accommodation and other costs such as evening meals etc. Xen Hackathons are not invite only, but of course it only makes sense for you to attend if you are trying to solve a concrete code or design problem around Xen and in particular if others that attend are working on something similar.
Signing up!
If you are planning to attend please sign up quickly, such that I get a feeling for the number of attendees.
If you think you will attend please sign up on the Wiki page If you think you may attend, but are not sure yet add you can sign up provisionally (please follow instructions on the Wiki page)
Please also add topics and stuff you want to cover.
Thank you to Oracle
I wanted to thank Oracle and in particular Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk and Monica Kumar for making the Hackathon happen.
See you there!
Posted in Uncategorized.
By Lars – February 8, 2012
I wanted to remind vendors in the Xen community and individuals looking for jobs, that Xen.org has a Jobs in the community page. In the last three months, four positions were filled. If you are a vendor which is active in the Xen community and are looking to fill a position, follow the instructions on the jobs page. If you are looking for a job in the Xen community, check out the jobs page. Maybe there is a job for you.
Posted in Uncategorized.
By Lars – February 6, 2012
Dear Community Members,
I am pleased to announce that I am finally able to build a new website for Xen.org. In fact some of the work has already started and it is time to get your input. The aim of this work is to create an engaging and integrated community web site that invites participation and acts as a portal for Xen users, developers and companies in the eco-system. You can get more detail about our plans and information about the site by going to the Xen Wiki.
The new site will have several main areas:
The home page, which mainly acts as an aggregator for news and activity happening in the community. This should make it easier for newcomers to Xen, to have a brief look and get a feeling of the vibrancy of the Xen community. There is actually a lot of activity today: it is merely obscured and hidden as the activity is dispersed to many places. The home page will also provide a window into the new Xen.org blog, as well as sections for Xen events, etc. An area for users. This area will provide information about Xen and Xen projects, will help you learn about Xen, will point people to downloads and Linux/Unix distributions that contain Xen, will help you find documentation, will help you get help and support, etc. Xen has traditionally been a very developer focused community. As a consequence we have not supported our users that well. I have some open questions in this area, where I will be looking for your input. For example: is there a preference for mailing lists, forums, or stackoverflow like functionality? How should we best link to Linux distributions and other projects that distribute Xen? An eco-system area: this is essentially a searchable directory of product and projects that use Xen, modify Xen, build on top of Xen, distribute Xen, etc. It is also a directory of research around Xen and services such as consultancy, training, hosting and cloud vendors that are built on top of Xen. This section will be fairly interactive: the intention is that if you are a vendor, you can add an entry to the directory which will be approved by a moderator moderator before publication. As a user of the directory, you can rate, recommend, comment on vendors, products, projects, etc. An area for developers: this contains project descriptions, links to downloads, codelines, information about governance, mailing lists, etc. Other changes: the site will have the capability to register users. Generally, all areas of the site will be accessible without any user account, except for areas where you need to write to the site and identification is thus necessary. We envisage that we will be able to implement single sign-on capability for the new site and at least the Xen wiki. There will be user profiles that allow you to provide information about how you use Xen, but ultimately you only have to provide what you are comfortable with. The idea is for example that I can implement functionality such as the old community spotlight section by just maintaining a list of profile names. Name, pictures, bio, etc. would be managed and maintained by you. I am also looking at capabilities, such as being able to send newsletters, to registered site users.We will consult you on questions such as look and feel, on a new or revamped Xen logo, on new panda’s, on navigation, on some of the headlines, taglines and many more items as questions arise. After all, this will be a website for YOU!. I will publish questions where I am looking for input on the Xen Wiki and announce on the mailing lists or here, depending on the issue.
Looking forward to hear from you!
Best Regards
Lars
Posted in Uncategorized.
By Lars – February 3, 2012
Dear Community Members,
I am pleased to announce the date and location of the 2012 XenSummit in North America. It will be held from Aug 27-28, 2012 in San Diego, CA, USA. The event will be held immediately before LinuxCon North America 2012, at the same venue. You will find more information on the XenSummit events page.
Call for Participation
The CFP for XenSummit is now open. All submissions must be received before midnight May 1, 2012 PDT.
![[image]](http://mowser.com/img?url=http%3A%2F%2Fxen.org%2Fimages%2Ficons%2Fproposal.png)
PMC
I will also again be looking for volunteers to join the Program Management Committee for XenSummit. As a PMC member you have the following responsibilities
Review submitted topics for the event (we will typically have 3 one hour calls and a bit of homework is needed) Assist in compiling the final agenda for the event If attending, introduce speakers – you don’t have to
Please get in touch with community.manager@xen.org, if you want to join the PMC. We are aiming to have the first PMC meeting shortly after May 1st.
Sponsors
There are plenty opportunities of sponsoring the event. If you are interested, please contact community.manager@xen.org.
Posted in Events, Xen Summit.
Tagged with Xen Summit, Xen Summit 2012.
By Lars – January 31, 2012
I am pleased to announce the Xen 3.4.4 release, which is an update of the Xen 3.4.x series. This should be one of the most reliable releases since it is the latest maintenance release in the long term stable 3.4 branch that has had endured years of enterprise usage. The update release contains
Security enhancements including CVE-2011-1583 Support for AMD Family 15h (Bulldozer) CPUs Performances and stability improvements Various bux fixes
I wanted to thank Keith Coleman from N2 Servers, which offers high-availability managed Xen hosting with geographic redundancy, for maintaining the Xen 3.4 branch and leading this Xen.org release.
Xen 3.4.4 is available for download from here!
Posted in Xen Hypervisor.
Tagged with xen 3.4.4, Xen Releases.
By Lars – January 27, 2012
