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Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2015 16:12:20 -0300
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Subject: Re: [DISCUSS] XCP usage with CloudStack
From: Rafael Weingartner <rafaelweingartner@gmail.com>
To: "users@cloudstack.apache.org" <users@cloudstack.apache.org>
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Dear Tim Mackey,

I have a production environment using XCP (XAPI). As far as I know, the
difference between the use of XAPI and Xenserver is that Xenserver is an OS
bundled altogether with a version of Xen hypervisor, XAPI and some
management tools. While, XAPI is just the API used to consolidate workloads
and interact with the Xen hypervisor hosts.

At the end, Xenserver environments are using the Xen hypervisor and XAPI
toolstack. The difference is that it comes pre-built with an OS (CentOS?).

When Cloudstack sends some command to start or stop a VM, it will send
something like =E2=80=9Cxe vm-start uuid=3D<uidVM>=E2=80=9D or =E2=80=9Cxe =
vm-shutdown uuid=3D<uidVM>=E2=80=9D,
these are XAPI commands. Therefore, even if you are using Xenserver
environments, those are the commands that are going to be used; hence,
Xenserver encapsulates the XAPI and Xen hypervisor.

To my knowledge, now that Xenserver was open by Citrix, there should not be
any difference on capabilities between the XAPI that we get from here:
http://www.xenproject.org/developers/teams/xapi.html

And the one that we get when we install the Xenserver directly.


Now answering your questions:

1. What OS/version are you using for dom0 and with what hypervisor version?

We are using Debian 7.4.0, we first tried Ubuntu server, but it was not
stable enough for a production environments. The Ubuntu had some bugs and
missing dependencies that had to be worked around.

2. How did you deploy XCP (from pre-compiled ISO, built from source,
package source i.e yum/apt-get, xenserver-core packages, something else)

We installed the XCP (XAPI) using the apt repository.
We first installed the xen hypervisor:

# apt-get install xen-hypervisor-amd64

then the XAPI packages:

# apt-get install xcp-xapi

Of course, is not as simple as just running those commands, we also had to
configure the networking and tuned the xen hypervisor, XAPI, storage and
etc.


3. How are you handling updates to the XCP/Xen/XAPI components,
particularly those of a security nature?

If any patch is created and we find that it has to be applied in our
environment, we first look if it is already in apt-get repository, if it is
there, we just upgrade that package. If the upgrade is not in the official
repository, we get and apply it manually.


I am curious, what are the assumptions you make for Xenserver environments?

On Fri, Apr 17, 2015 at 11:23 AM, Tim Mackey <tmackey@gmail.com> wrote:

> A little bit ago there was a thread started on the dev list about XCP and
> CloudStack.  I've had a bit of a think about this if you're using XCP I
> would like to understand better how XCP, and by extension the XAPI
> toolstack when *not* part of XenServer, is deployed in your environments.
> If XCP/XAPI users can answer these three questions, it would help in
> understanding how to best handle XCP moving forward.
>
> 1. What OS/version are you using for dom0 and with what hypervisor versio=
n?
>
> 2. How did you deploy XCP (from pre-compiled ISO, built from source,
> package source i.e yum/apt-get, xenserver-core packages, something else)
>
> 3. How are you handling updates to the XCP/Xen/XAPI components,
> particularly those of a security nature?
>
> While the XAPI toolstack as part of XenServer receives significant
> development and QA attention, the same can't be said for legacy XCP and
> pure XAPI.  There are also assumptions made for XenServer which aren't
> always valid in a legacy XCP or general XAPI installation.  What I'm tryi=
ng
> to figure out is if we need to address any issues, and if so what the
> impact might be.
>
> Thanks
>
> -tim
>


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