libvirt is an important piece of the overall open source virtualization management puzzle. Many of the open source virtualization management applications that users enjoy are based on libvirt, since it provides a normalized API for managing heterogeneous hypervisors. For Xen to enjoy this greater ecosystem of open source virtualization tools, it must be well supported and maintained in libvirt.
This presentation will give a basic overview of libvirt, discuss the latest status of the libvirt libxenlight driver (also known as the libxl driver), and discuss future improvements planned for the driver.
6. 6
Legacy Xen driver
• Uber-driver that uses xend, xenstore, xm, and
hypercalls
• Requires and primarily uses xend
• Became a stateful driver in libvirt 1.0.5, but state
maintained in xend
• I repeat: state is maintained in xend
7. 7
libxl Xen driver
• Introduced in libvirt 0,9.0
• Supports Xen >= 4.2 (best to have latest 4.x.y)
• Accessed with same Xen URI
• All existing domain configuration should just work
• Will not load if legacy Xen driver is loaded (xend is
running)
• Stateful driver, state maintained in libvirt
• I repeat: state is maintained in libvirt
• Note: don't mix and match libxl apps
9. 9
Planned Improvements
• Support for xl config format
‒ domxml-{to,from}-native
• LockManager integration
• Snapshots
• Spice
• Unit tests
• <your feature>
10. 10
Help Wanted!
• SPoF with only one maintainer of upstream Xen
drivers
• Need more libxl APIs
• Need more functions implemented in the libxl driver
• Please consider libvirt when adding APIs to libxl
git://libvirt.org/libvirt.git
http://libvirt.org/hacking.html