It is no accident that Xen software powers some of the largest Clouds in existence. From its outset, the Xen Project was intended to enable what we now call Cloud Computing. This session will explore how the Xen Architecture addresses the needs of the Cloud in ways which facilitate security, throughput, and agility. It will also cover some of the hot new developments of the Xen Project.

1. Lars Kurth
Community Manger, Xen Project
Chairman, Xen Project Advisory Board
Director, Open Source, Citrix lars_kurth

2. Was a contributor to various projects
Worked in parallel computing, tools,
mobile and now virtualization
Long history in change projects
Community guy at Symbian Foundation
Learned how NOT to do stuff
Community guy for the Xen Project
Working for Citrix
Accountable to Xen Project Advisory Board
Chairman of Xen Project Advisory Board

4. Stability is Paramount
Value of IT: consistent service availability
Service capacity specified a year or more in advance
What’s up, stays up
Change is Bad
Change to status quo is disruptive and dangerous

5. Availability of Services is Paramount
Value of IT: consistent service availability
matching dynamic business demand
Service capacity must move with business needs
What’s up when depends on what’s needed when
Change is Good
Services must change to cover the needs of the moment
Lack of change = lack of value

6. It must be stable
It must be secure
It must be configurable on a large scale
It must take orchestration
It must be multi-tenant

8. An Open Source Hypervisor
> 10M Users
Powering some of the biggest Clouds in Production
Amazon Web Services, Rackspace Public Cloud, Terremark, …
Several sub-projects
Xen Hypervisor, XAPI management tools, Mirage OS
Linux Foundation Collaborative Project
Sponsored by Amazon Web Services, AMD, Bromium, Calxeda, CA Technologies,
Cisco, Citrix, Google, Intel, NetApp, Oracle, Samsung and Verizon
10 years old

9. with a twist

10. VM2 VMn
Applications Applications
Guest OS Guest OS
Applications Applications
VM1 (or DomU)
Applications
Guest OS
VM0 (or Dom0)
Toolstack
Dom0 Kernel
HWCPUsMemoryI/O
Scheduler MMU Timers InterruptsConfig

11. VM2 VMn
Applications Applications
Guest OS Guest OS
Applications Applications
VM1 (or DomU)
Applications
Guest OS
VM0 (or Dom0)
Toolstack
Dom0 Kernel
HWCPUsMemoryI/O
Drivers
Scheduler MMU Timers InterruptsConfig
back PV front

12. VM2 VMn
Applications Applications
Guest OS Guest OS
Applications Applications
VM1 (or DomU)
Applications
Guest OS
VM0 (or Dom0)
Toolstack
Dom0 Kernel
HWCPUsMemoryI/O
QEMU
Scheduler MMU Timers InterruptsConfig

13. DomU
DomU
DomU
Dom0

16. Service VM
Guest OS
Dom0
Toolstack
Dom0 Kernel
HWCPUsMemoryI/O
Scheduler MMU Timers InterruptsConfig
Driver(s)
QEMU
Disaggregation

17. Service VM
Guest OS
Dom0
Toolstack
Dom0 Kernel
HWCPUsMemoryI/O
Scheduler MMU Timers InterruptsConfig
QEMU
Linux Security Modules /
SELinux
Xen Security Modules /
FLASK

19. Single Host
Basic Functions
Multiple Hosts
Additional Functionality
Multiple Hosts
More Functionality
Increased level of functionality and integration with other components
Toolstack / Console
Hypervisor Xen Hypervisor
XAPI / XEDefault / XL Libvirt / VIRSH

20. Xen
XAPI

21. XAPI / XEDefault / XL
Xen Hypervisor
Toolstack / Console
Hypervisor
Libvirt / VIRSH

22. It must be stable
It must be secure
It must be configurable on a large scale
It must take orchestration
It must be multi-tenant
AWS, Rackspace Public Cloud, Terremark, many others …
Tons of features: see tinyurl.com/xen-secure
Puppet, Chef, Salt, … − GUIs − APIs − Orchestration
Apache CloudStack, OpenNebula, OpenStack, …
Pools and other functionality in XAPI

24. DOM0 VM1 VMn
Guest OS Guest OS
Applications Applications
QEMU
Drivers
XS Tools XS Tools
XAPI
3rd party
Components
HA
Storage
Mgr

25. DOM0 VM1 VMn
Guest OS Guest OS
Applications Applications
QEMU
Drivers
XS Tools XS Tools
XAPI
3rd party
Components
HA
Storage
Mgr

26. DOM0
QEMU
Drivers
XAPI
3rd party
Components
HA
Storage
Mgr
Virtualization Base Packages
(Xen, QEMU, Libvirt)
xenserver-core package
(XAPI, Storage Manager, …)
(Currently excluding 3rd party stuff)
Base Distro
(CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu)

28. 71%
13%
8%
5% 3%
Hypervisor
KVM
Xen (inc. XAPI)
ESX
LXC
HyperV
Source: http://fr.slideshare.net/openstack/havana-survey-resultsfinal-19312081 (before Xen Project and OSS XenServer)

29. Not on Feature and Quality parity yet
Significant progress in Havanah / 13.2
Xen and XAPI not perceived to be Open Source
This is now different
Citrix backing of Apache CloudStack
Created “confusion” in the marketplace
Created resentment by OpenStack developers

30. Source: https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/HypervisorSupportMatrix
Group A
(Fully Supported)
Most Features
KVM/QEMU + LIBVIRT
Group B
(Gate Tested)
Missing:
Volume Swap
Volume Rate Limiting
XEN + XAPI
Group C
(Minimal Testing)
Missing:
See table
All the others
Xen + LIBVIRT
TBD
Significant Investment

31. Source: http://docs.openstack.org/trunk/openstack-compute/install/yum/content/introduction-to-xen.html

32. Source: http://docs.openstack.org/trunk/openstack-compute/install/yum/content/introduction-to-xen.html

33. Source: http://docs.openstack.org/trunk/openstack-compute/install/yum/content/introduction-to-xen.html

34. Source: https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/XenServer/DevStack
DevStack:
Script to set up OS VM
Also adds:
• Swift
• Glance
• Horizon

35. Havanah 2013.2:
OpenStack support for xenserver-core
More Tests; Improved Quality (moving towards Group A)
Icehouse 2014.1
Feature catch-up (not in one go)
ARM support for xenserver-core
Expanding VGPU Functionality
Desktop and Enterprise Features

36. Impact:
OpenStack can also run in Dom0
Closer to OpenStack Usage Model
Closer to OpenStack Development Model
More Deployment Options (Security)
localhost

37. Alive and kicking

38. 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Developer list traffic : Q3 2003 - now

39. 0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
2010 2011 2012 2013 (H1)
UPC Spectra Logic Redhat iweb
GridCentric Calxeda Fujitsu (Misc)
AWS (Academia) John Hopkins University AMD
Linaro Oracle NSA Intel

41. Xen is a great solution for the Cloud
Significant Investment in XAPI + OpenStack
As well as CloudStack
The Xen Community is accelerating

43. More info at:
xenproject.org
events.linuxfoundation.org/events/xen-project-developer-summit

44. Please rate the talk
on slideshare or twitter
www.slideshare.net/xen_com_mgr/

45. Flickr:
“Giant Sequoia Trees” by Raj
Wikipedia:
“Bodium Castle” by Antony McCallum
Other Images:
By Lars Kurth or acquired
Xen Project:
www.xenproject.org
wiki.xenproject.org
lists.xenproject.org
xenbits.xenproject.org
@xen_org
##xen