Xen 4.7 Headline Features (for PR)

Xen 4.7 Headline Features (for PR)

[Lars Kurth]

Folks,

given that we have we are getting close to RC's, I would like to start to spec out the headline Features for the press release. The big items I am aware of are COLO. I am a little confused about xSplice.

Maybe we can use this thread to start collating a short-list.

Best Regards
Lars


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Re: Xen 4.7 Headline Features (for PR)

[Wei Liu]

On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 02:26:39PM +0100, Lars Kurth wrote:
> Folks,
> 
> given that we have we are getting close to RC's, I would like to start to spec out the headline Features for the press release. The big items I am aware of are COLO. I am a little confused about xSplice.
> 
> Maybe we can use this thread to start collating a short-list.
> 

xSplice is definitively the first one on my list. I'm actually holding
off cutting RC1 waiting for it to be merged.

COLO is also a candidate, but there are many components that are not yet
upstream. Those are not necessarily part of xen.

ACPI support on ARM is also a possible candidate.

There are also new PVUSB support in toolstack and some Intel features
but I think they are less shiny.

Wei.

> Best Regards
> Lars
> 

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Re: Xen 4.7 Headline Features (for PR)

[Juergen Gross]

On 22/04/16 15:26, Lars Kurth wrote:
> Folks,
> 
> given that we have we are getting close to RC's, I would like to start to spec out the headline Features for the press release. The big items I am aware of are COLO. I am a little confused about xSplice.
> 
> Maybe we can use this thread to start collating a short-list.

I've worked on:

- huge pv-domains (>512GB)
- pvUSB (backend in qemu still pending)
- xenstore domain enhancements


Juergen


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Re: Xen 4.7 Headline Features (for PR)

[Wei Liu]

On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 02:39:43PM +0100, Wei Liu wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 02:26:39PM +0100, Lars Kurth wrote:
> > Folks,
> > 
> > given that we have we are getting close to RC's, I would like to start to spec out the headline Features for the press release. The big items I am aware of are COLO. I am a little confused about xSplice.
> > 
> > Maybe we can use this thread to start collating a short-list.
> > 
> 
> xSplice is definitively the first one on my list. I'm actually holding
> off cutting RC1 waiting for it to be merged.
> 

I forgot to post this to this list. For the record, some hypervisor
committers (Jan, Andrew and Konrad), Ross, I and some other community
members had a meeting during hackathon. The conclusion is that xSplice
is important enough to have a freeze exception.

Wei.

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Re: Xen 4.7 Headline Features (for PR)

[George Dunlap]

On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 2:26 PM, Lars Kurth <lars.kurth.xen@gmail.com> wrote:
> Folks,
>
> given that we have we are getting close to RC's, I would like to start to spec out the headline Features for the press release. The big items I am aware of are COLO. I am a little confused about xSplice.
>
> Maybe we can use this thread to start collating a short-list.

hotplug disk backends (drbd, iscsi, &c) for HVM guests.

hard affinity for credit2

soft reset for pv guests

kconfig for the hypervisor

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Re: Xen 4.7 Headline Features (for PR)

[Meng Xu]

On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 9:26 AM, Lars Kurth <lars.kurth.xen@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Folks,
>
> given that we have we are getting close to RC's, I would like to start to spec out the headline Features for the press release. The big items I am aware of are COLO. I am a little confused about xSplice.
>
> Maybe we can use this thread to start collating a short-list.

How about the improved RTDS scheduler:
(1) Change the RTDS scheduler from quantum-driven model to event-driven model;
(2) Support get/set per-VCPU parameters in RTDS toolstack.

Thanks,

Meng

-- 
Meng Xu
PhD Student in Computer and Information Science
University of Pennsylvania
http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~mengxu/

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Re: Xen 4.7 Headline Features (for PR)

[Lars Kurth]

> On 22 Apr 2016, at 14:39, Wei Liu <wei.liu2@citrix.com> wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 02:26:39PM +0100, Lars Kurth wrote:
>> Folks,
>> 
>> given that we have we are getting close to RC's, I would like to start to spec out the headline Features for the press release. The big items I am aware of are COLO. I am a little confused about xSplice.
>> 
>> Maybe we can use this thread to start collating a short-list.
>> 

Typically we have 3-5 Headline Features in a press release.

> xSplice is definitively the first one on my list. I'm actually holding
> off cutting RC1 waiting for it to be merged.

This would definitely be the #1 Headline feature then. It's the single most important thing we have done in a while and it has the potential to positive

> COLO is also a candidate, but there are many components that are not yet
> upstream. Those are not necessarily part of xen.

Alright, we may need to be careful as to not raise wrong expectations, if there are missing pieces say in QEMU. On the other hand, having this in place before KVM is also nice.
 
> ACPI support on ARM is also a possible candidate.

Agreed. Also easy to explain.

> There are also new PVUSB support in toolstack and some Intel features
> but I think they are less shiny.

I am working with Intel product management to better understand the use-cases for some of these and the user impact/benefit. That was something, we were struggling with in the past (aka acronym overload and hard to understand the big picture).

Best Regards
Lars


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Re: Xen 4.7 Headline Features (for PR)

[Lars Kurth]

> On 22 Apr 2016, at 15:08, George Dunlap <dunlapg@umich.edu> wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 2:26 PM, Lars Kurth <lars.kurth.xen@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Folks,
>> 
>> given that we have we are getting close to RC's, I would like to start to spec out the headline Features for the press release. The big items I am aware of are COLO. I am a little confused about xSplice.
>> 
>> Maybe we can use this thread to start collating a short-list.
> 
> hotplug disk backends (drbd, iscsi, &c) for HVM guests.
> 
> hard affinity for credit2
> 
> soft reset for pv guests
> 
> kconfig for the hypervisor

This is one which potentially has a big security impact and could be a Headline Feature. Just to remind me, is KCONFIG a run-time or build-time config mechanism. If the latter, distro users will not benefit from it.

Lars


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Re: Xen 4.7 Headline Features (for PR)

[George Dunlap]

On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 3:19 PM, Lars Kurth <lars.kurth.xen@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 22 Apr 2016, at 14:39, Wei Liu <wei.liu2@citrix.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 02:26:39PM +0100, Lars Kurth wrote:
>>> Folks,
>>>
>>> given that we have we are getting close to RC's, I would like to start to spec out the headline Features for the press release. The big items I am aware of are COLO. I am a little confused about xSplice.
>>>
>>> Maybe we can use this thread to start collating a short-list.
>>>
>
> Typically we have 3-5 Headline Features in a press release.
>
>> xSplice is definitively the first one on my list. I'm actually holding
>> off cutting RC1 waiting for it to be merged.
>
> This would definitely be the #1 Headline feature then. It's the single most important thing we have done in a while and it has the potential to positive
>
>> COLO is also a candidate, but there are many components that are not yet
>> upstream. Those are not necessarily part of xen.
>
> Alright, we may need to be careful as to not raise wrong expectations, if there are missing pieces say in QEMU. On the other hand, having this in place before KVM is also nice.
>
>> ACPI support on ARM is also a possible candidate.
>
> Agreed. Also easy to explain.
>
>> There are also new PVUSB support in toolstack and some Intel features
>> but I think they are less shiny.
>
> I am working with Intel product management to better understand the use-cases for some of these and the user impact/benefit. That was something, we were struggling with in the past (aka acronym overload and hard to understand the big picture).

Posted interrupts should allow a transparent improvement in
performance for passed-through devices (when hardware support is
available).

 -George

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Re: Xen 4.7 Headline Features (for PR)

[Vitaly Kuznetsov]

George Dunlap <dunlapg@umich.edu> writes:

>
> soft reset for pv guests
>

For HVM guests I guess.

-- 
  Vitaly

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Re: Xen 4.7 Headline Features (for PR)

[George Dunlap]

On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 3:22 PM, Lars Kurth <lars.kurth.xen@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 22 Apr 2016, at 15:08, George Dunlap <dunlapg@umich.edu> wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 2:26 PM, Lars Kurth <lars.kurth.xen@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Folks,
>>>
>>> given that we have we are getting close to RC's, I would like to start to spec out the headline Features for the press release. The big items I am aware of are COLO. I am a little confused about xSplice.
>>>
>>> Maybe we can use this thread to start collating a short-list.
>>
>> hotplug disk backends (drbd, iscsi, &c) for HVM guests.
>>
>> hard affinity for credit2
>>
>> soft reset for pv guests
>>
>> kconfig for the hypervisor
>
> This is one which potentially has a big security impact and could be a Headline Feature. Just to remind me, is KCONFIG a run-time or build-time config mechanism. If the latter, distro users will not benefit from it.

Kconfig is build-time.  Distros could use it in principle, and I think
Gentoo will (that was part of Doug's motivation for doing it, IIUC).
But yes, I suspect most distros will keep everything in by default.
It's more a feature for embedded / security-conscious vendors.

 -George

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Re: Xen 4.7 Headline Features (for PR)

[Andrew Cooper]

On 22/04/16 14:26, Lars Kurth wrote:
> Folks,
>
> given that we have we are getting close to RC's, I would like to start to spec out the headline Features for the press release. The big items I am aware of are COLO. I am a little confused about xSplice.
>
> Maybe we can use this thread to start collating a short-list.

* CPUID levelling improvements for x86.

~Andrew

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Re: Xen 4.7 Headline Features (for PR)

[Wei Liu]

On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 03:22:51PM +0100, Lars Kurth wrote:
> 
> > On 22 Apr 2016, at 15:08, George Dunlap <dunlapg@umich.edu> wrote:
> > 
> > On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 2:26 PM, Lars Kurth <lars.kurth.xen@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Folks,
> >> 
> >> given that we have we are getting close to RC's, I would like to start to spec out the headline Features for the press release. The big items I am aware of are COLO. I am a little confused about xSplice.
> >> 
> >> Maybe we can use this thread to start collating a short-list.
> > 
> > hotplug disk backends (drbd, iscsi, &c) for HVM guests.
> > 
> > hard affinity for credit2
> > 
> > soft reset for pv guests
> > 
> > kconfig for the hypervisor
> 
> This is one which potentially has a big security impact and could be a Headline Feature. Just to remind me, is KCONFIG a run-time or build-time config mechanism. If the latter, distro users will not benefit from it.
> 

Build time. It's more useful to people who would like to trim down Xen.
It would be useful for embedded use cases I think. Distros will probably
go with default configuration.

Wei.

> Lars
> 

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Re: Xen 4.7 Headline Features (for PR)

[Lars Kurth]

> On 22 Apr 2016, at 15:29, Andrew Cooper <andrew.cooper3@citrix.com> wrote:
> 
> On 22/04/16 14:26, Lars Kurth wrote:
>> Folks,
>> 
>> given that we have we are getting close to RC's, I would like to start to spec out the headline Features for the press release. The big items I am aware of are COLO. I am a little confused about xSplice.
>> 
>> Maybe we can use this thread to start collating a short-list.
> 
> * CPUID levelling improvements for x86.

I will let the thread run for a while, but it seems we have a few Headlines and groups of smaller features/improvements and features that build on Headline Features we had in the past that support certain market segments. Once I chatted with Zibby next week, we will work on a concrete proposal and share it.

Lars




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Re: Xen 4.7 Headline Features (for PR)

[Julien Grall]

Hi Lars,

On 22/04/16 15:19, Lars Kurth wrote:
>
>> On 22 Apr 2016, at 14:39, Wei Liu <wei.liu2@citrix.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 02:26:39PM +0100, Lars Kurth wrote:
>>> Folks,
>>>
>>> given that we have we are getting close to RC's, I would like to start to spec out the headline Features for the press release. The big items I am aware of are COLO. I am a little confused about xSplice.
>>>
>>> Maybe we can use this thread to start collating a short-list.
>>>
>
> Typically we have 3-5 Headline Features in a press release.
>
>> xSplice is definitively the first one on my list. I'm actually holding
>> off cutting RC1 waiting for it to be merged.
>
> This would definitely be the #1 Headline feature then. It's the single most important thing we have done in a while and it has the potential to positive
>
>> COLO is also a candidate, but there are many components that are not yet
>> upstream. Those are not necessarily part of xen.
>
> Alright, we may need to be careful as to not raise wrong expectations, if there are missing pieces say in QEMU. On the other hand, having this in place before KVM is also nice.
>
>> ACPI support on ARM is also a possible candidate.

Note that this feature is considered as a tech preview and not enabled 
by default in Xen (you need to add XEN_CONFIG_EXPERT=y on the command line).

Other headline features:
   * Wallclock support
   * Support of PSCI 1.0 for the host
   * Drop the support for HIP04 platform

> Agreed. Also easy to explain.

Regards,

-- 
Julien Grall

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Re: Xen 4.7 Headline Features (for PR)

[Doug Goldstein]

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On 4/22/16 9:25 AM, George Dunlap wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 3:22 PM, Lars Kurth <lars.kurth.xen@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On 22 Apr 2016, at 15:08, George Dunlap <dunlapg@umich.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 2:26 PM, Lars Kurth <lars.kurth.xen@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Folks,
>>>>
>>>> given that we have we are getting close to RC's, I would like to start to spec out the headline Features for the press release. The big items I am aware of are COLO. I am a little confused about xSplice.
>>>>
>>>> Maybe we can use this thread to start collating a short-list.
>>>
>>> hotplug disk backends (drbd, iscsi, &c) for HVM guests.
>>>
>>> hard affinity for credit2
>>>
>>> soft reset for pv guests
>>>
>>> kconfig for the hypervisor
>>
>> This is one which potentially has a big security impact and could be a Headline Feature. Just to remind me, is KCONFIG a run-time or build-time config mechanism. If the latter, distro users will not benefit from it.
> 
> Kconfig is build-time.  Distros could use it in principle, and I think
> Gentoo will (that was part of Doug's motivation for doing it, IIUC).
> But yes, I suspect most distros will keep everything in by default.
> It's more a feature for embedded / security-conscious vendors.
> 
>  -George

Not really important but I figured I'd be clear about my motivations.
For Gentoo I'll actually keep the stock settings. For Yocto I'll keep
the stock settings but expose a way to run kconfig (like the linux
kernel is in Yocto) for vendors with a security focus. I'm aware of a
handful of downstream vendors which will utilize that capability.

-- 
Doug Goldstein


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Re: Xen 4.7 Headline Features (for PR)

[Lars Kurth]

> On 24 Apr 2016, at 02:06, Doug Goldstein <cardoe@cardoe.com> wrote:
> 
> On 4/22/16 9:25 AM, George Dunlap wrote:
>> On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 3:22 PM, Lars Kurth <lars.kurth.xen@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> On 22 Apr 2016, at 15:08, George Dunlap <dunlapg@umich.edu> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> kconfig for the hypervisor
>>> 
>>> This is one which potentially has a big security impact and could be a Headline Feature. Just to remind me, is KCONFIG a run-time or build-time config mechanism. If the latter, distro users will not benefit from it.
>> 
>> Kconfig is build-time.  Distros could use it in principle, and I think
>> Gentoo will (that was part of Doug's motivation for doing it, IIUC).
>> But yes, I suspect most distros will keep everything in by default.
>> It's more a feature for embedded / security-conscious vendors.
>> 
>> -George
> 
> Not really important but I figured I'd be clear about my motivations.
> For Gentoo I'll actually keep the stock settings. For Yocto I'll keep
> the stock settings but expose a way to run kconfig (like the linux
> kernel is in Yocto) for vendors with a security focus. I'm aware of a
> handful of downstream vendors which will utilize that capability.

Doug, this is good background information. Is the YOCTO work something ongoing, or is it something which we can refer to in the press coverage. I guess what you are saying is that YOCTO will (or already contains) a simple way to build a minimal Xen distribution.
Lars
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Re: Xen 4.7 Headline Features (for PR)

[Doug Goldstein]

[-- Attachment #1.1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2829 bytes --]

On 4/27/16 8:12 AM, Lars Kurth wrote:
> 
>> On 24 Apr 2016, at 02:06, Doug Goldstein <cardoe@cardoe.com> wrote:
>>
>> On 4/22/16 9:25 AM, George Dunlap wrote:
>>> On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 3:22 PM, Lars Kurth <lars.kurth.xen@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 22 Apr 2016, at 15:08, George Dunlap <dunlapg@umich.edu> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> kconfig for the hypervisor
>>>>
>>>> This is one which potentially has a big security impact and could be a Headline Feature. Just to remind me, is KCONFIG a run-time or build-time config mechanism. If the latter, distro users will not benefit from it.
>>>
>>> Kconfig is build-time.  Distros could use it in principle, and I think
>>> Gentoo will (that was part of Doug's motivation for doing it, IIUC).
>>> But yes, I suspect most distros will keep everything in by default.
>>> It's more a feature for embedded / security-conscious vendors.
>>>
>>> -George
>>
>> Not really important but I figured I'd be clear about my motivations.
>> For Gentoo I'll actually keep the stock settings. For Yocto I'll keep
>> the stock settings but expose a way to run kconfig (like the linux
>> kernel is in Yocto) for vendors with a security focus. I'm aware of a
>> handful of downstream vendors which will utilize that capability.
> 
> Doug, this is good background information. Is the YOCTO work something ongoing, or is it something which we can refer to in the press coverage. I guess what you are saying is that YOCTO will (or already contains) a simple way to build a minimal Xen distribution.
> Lars
> 

Yes I try to keep the Yocto Project's meta-virtualization [1] layer in a
good state for building the latest Xen version for the latest version of
Yocto. e.g. The current version of Yocto is kergoth and it contains Xen
4.6.1 (as does jethro, the prior version). I (or other people I work
with) are pretty responsive on build breakages with the in development
version (master) as we are working to promote Xen to the organizations
we work with and they rely on Yocto.

You should be able to following the Yocto Quick Start [2] with 2
hopefully minor tweaks:

1. download and add the meta-virtualization layer the same way the guide
has you add other layers
2. don't build core-image-minimal or core-image-sato but instead build
xen-image-minimal

The resultant image should boot Xen 4.6.1 and a fairly recent Linux
kernel as dom0 (I believe the version as of this writing is 4.4.x). The
Xen image will be build with the stock './configure && make' options.
However there are a number of ways at customizing it (e.g. using XSM)
using normal Yocto methods.

[1] http://git.yoctoproject.org/cgit/cgit.cgi/meta-virtualization/about/
[2]
http://www.yoctoproject.org/docs/current/yocto-project-qs/yocto-project-qs.html

-- 
Doug Goldstein


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