[Xen-devel] [RFC] XCP-ng subproject proposal

* [Xen-devel] [RFC] XCP-ng subproject proposal
@ 2019-07-22 16:25 Olivier Lambert
  2019-07-29 18:38 ` Lars Kurth
                   ` (2 more replies)
  0 siblings, 3 replies; 9+ messages in thread
From: Olivier Lambert @ 2019-07-22 16:25 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: xen-devel

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Hello everyone,

Following up on discussions that we had at the last Xen summit, we’re
submitting a Xen subproject proposal, regarding XCP-ng project (
https://xcp-ng.org). Feel free to give your feedback!

Regards,

Olivier Lambert and XCP-ng team

# XCP-ng proposal

## The Project

XCP-ng is a turn-key virtualization platform based on the Xen Hypervisor,
using existing Xen Project tools (XAPI). It's built from Xenserver source,
improved and maintained by both passionate individuals and companies. The
result is a completely free and Open Source solution available for everyone.

Thanks to a very successful Kickstarter campaign as well as backing from
various companies, the project doesn't require any further funds and isn't
seeking monetary contributions.

We believe forming a Xen sub-project within the Linux Foundation has the
potential to bring further companies and contributors into the Xen Project
as a whole, as well as demonstrate our dedication to open source. XCP-ng
has already displayed its ability to draw new users into the Xen
virtualization ecosystem. For new users, utilizing Xen from scratch can be
daunting. XCP-ng offers a way to solve this problem by drawing end-users
more closely into the Xen Project and providing an easy route for
prospective Xen users to get started with Xen. This is an area where Xen
has been trailing KVM for a long time. Hosting XCP-ng within the Xen
Project provides a route to level the playing field. It would also enable
the Xen Project to leverage XCP-ng success stories for the benefit of the
Xen Project as a whole.

## The Mission

Our goal is to continue development of XCP-ng while building a large
community of contributors to XCP-ng. We also expect an increase of
contributions to XAPI as well as the Xen Project. Through large community
involvement and contributions we have already turned XCP-ng into a stable
hypervisor platform that is used in small and large enterprise deployments.

## Upstream first, fully Open Source

Vates and XCP-ng have started to work with a number of academic
organizations with the aim to fund and develop feature improvements and new
features that benefit the whole Xen Project ecosystem (including the
Hypervisor and XAPI). We follow an upstream first philosophy, which is
possible because of the fast release cycle of XCP-ng and expect to become a
long-term contributor to XAPI and the Hypervisor project.

Besides contributions, we believe that an XCP-ng which is part of the Xen
Project will deliver other benefits:

* Bring passionate and verbal XCP-ng users closer to the Xen Project
* Bring more publicity to the Xen Project: currently we have the XCP-ng
blog, newsletter and success stories, which we are willing to share with
the Xen Project

With an incredibly active forum, IRC, and github, we are always looking for
more contributors to the project. We also believe in giving back to the
open source community via contributions to upstream projects, and we
believe becoming a Xen Project member will help in our ability to do so. To
further our dedication to open source, Vates SAS, the company with the most
active contributions to XCP-ng currently, is in the process of becoming a
Linux Foundation member.

## How we differ from existing platforms

Our vision is to maintain XCP-ng as a complete easy-to-use hypervisor
solution similar to existing full-stack solutions. Where we differ is our
dedication to the open source mindset. We have no licensing system or
license restrictions, all pieces of the platform are free to use.
Simultaneously, we encourage community involvement and have merged many
community contributions already.

## Infrastructure

The infrastructure will be primarily managed by Vates, with multiple
companies in partnership (mainly hosting companies owning DC real estate).
Access and resources can be given for people interested in becoming
maintainers.

We would also like to expand the very active XCP-ng forum to also cover Xen
and XAPI, providing a modern user friendly interface for users to discuss
the hypervisor and related parts with dedicated sections. This will help to
centralize much Xen & XAPI discussion in a place that is easier for casual
users to find than a mailing list.

## Security

XCP-ng has a dedicated email for security feedback (security@xcp-ng.org)
and is already a member of the Xen pre-disclosure mailing list.

## License

XCP-ng can be considered as a specialized Linux distribution, so there are
multiple packages inside it. However, most of its packages are licensed in
GPLv2.

## Contributors / Roles

Project lead: Olivier Lambert (Vates SAS)

* Github org: https://github.com/xcp-ng/
* Main website: https://xcp-ng.org

Extra notes:

* we already contributed to Xen hypervisor (see
https://lists.xenproject.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2019-02/msg01602.html
) and we plan to do more in the future
* we already contributed to XAPI (see
https://github.com/xapi-project/xen-api-libs-transitional/commit/3f881066a1bdd4b52275e49edb57fba0d47c2dc9
)
* we added new features (ZoL support, zstd compression…)
* we contributed to various other projects (eg: ZFS on Linux
https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/pull/8866)
* we are committed to invest money and time in R&D for XCP-ng (see
https://xcp-ng.org/blog/2018/12/19/xcp-ng-research-initiative/ )
* our dev process is fully documented and open:
https://github.com/xcp-ng/xcp/wiki/Development-process-tour
* we have dev diaries explaining to everyone what we are working on, in
details:
https://xcp-ng.org/forum/topic/1036/dev-diaries-1-analyzing-storage-perf-smapiv3

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