XCP exposes a fully featured management API called XAPI. But today, there is no active open source project providing a web GUI which uses XAPI to it's full potential. Xen Orchestra was originally designed as web interface for Xen in 2009, and is undergoing a complete re-write to fill this gap. XCP exposes a fully featured management API called XAPI. But today, there is no active open source project providing a web GUI which uses XAPI to it's full potential. Xen Orchestra was originally designed as web interface for Xen in 2009, and is undergoing a complete re-write to fill this gap. First, we will examine interesting features of XAPI, such as events, pools etc. that allow easy administration of virtualized environment. Then, we will see how these features fit into the Xen Orchestra architecture, which has been completely redesigned to reduce connections, bandwidth waste, storing of structured data, allowing persistence and so on. Finally, we will show how we display all that information (ergonomics choices from an ergonomist). We will conclude quickly on how you can engage and contribute to the Xen Orchestra project and make sure it helps fulfil your needs.

1. Xen Orchestra
A new Web UI for XCP
Olivier Lambert
XO Project Lead
olivier.lambert@vates.fr
Vates : Open source solutions
http://vates.fr
http://xen-orchestra.com

2. A brief History of XO
● Initial project started in 2009 on Xen Hypervisor
● 2010: project abandoned (lack of time -studies-,
small community, no corporate support)
● End of 2012: XO reboot with XAPI
Vates : Open source solutions
http://vates.fr
FOSDEM 2013 - http://xen-orchestra.com

3. A brief History of XO
● XO was born because of one question:
'On which host is running my VM, goddammit?'
● Then, more needs appear:
– Does my Dom0 have too much VMs?
– Does my Dom0 have enough RAM for new VM?
– Common admin tasks from Web interface
Vates : Open source solutions
http://vates.fr
FOSDEM 2013 - http://xen-orchestra.com

4. XO Initial objectives
● Provide Web interface for managing Xen
● Give a global overview of VMs and their hosts
● Make every day Xen administration easier
● We wanted more abstraction (regroup servers in one
resource)
● 2011 → XCP answers our prayers!
Vates : Open source solutions
http://vates.fr
FOSDEM 2013 - http://xen-orchestra.com

5. XCP and its XAPI
● XCP: Open source version of XenServer
● Complete stack for server virtualization (eg: pools)
● Powerful API: XAPI (using XML-RPC)
● XAPI is the backbone of XCP → backend for ALL
management apps
Vates : Open source solutions
http://vates.fr
FOSDEM 2013 - http://xen-orchestra.com

6. XCP features
● Event tracking (with progress and notifications):
perfect for XO!
● Resource pools
● VM lifecycle
● And many more! next talk by Mike McClurg ;)
Vates : Open source solutions
http://vates.fr
FOSDEM 2013 - http://xen-orchestra.com

7. Current GUI for XCP
● Xen Center: Windows only, rich client, no persistence
● Open Xen Manager: XenCenter's clone, rich client,
no persistence
● Lot of small and dead projects without communities
● Specific projects: VPS vendors, big cloud interfaces
(like Cloudstack or OpenStack)
Vates : Open source solutions
http://vates.fr
FOSDEM 2013 - http://xen-orchestra.com

8. XO ideas
● Use and embrace all possibilities of XAPI
● Fast and responsive web interface
● Bandwidth friendly
● Ergonomic user interface
● XO on top of pools: global overview & perspectives
● Corporate support and community
Vates : Open source solutions
http://vates.fr
FOSDEM 2013 - http://xen-orchestra.com

9. Solutions
Modular architecture (protocol: JSON-RPC)
XO-Server: daemon (PHP)
– Persistence
– Fine-grained permissions
– Modularity (plugin capable)
XO-Web: web client (PHP/JavaScript/Twitter
Bootstrap)
Vates : Open source solutions
http://vates.fr
FOSDEM 2013 - http://xen-orchestra.com

10. Solutions
Architecture
Vates : Open source solutions
http://vates.fr
FOSDEM 2013 - http://xen-orchestra.com

11. Solutions
Architecture
Vates : Open source solutions
http://vates.fr
FOSDEM 2013 - http://xen-orchestra.com

12. Solutions
UI Design
● Challenge: data density, diversity & redundancy
● Traditional solution: table with pertinent data
● Perspective and research: innovative display
Vates : Open source solutions
http://vates.fr
FOSDEM 2013 - http://xen-orchestra.com

13. Design research
Vates : Open source solutions
http://vates.fr
FOSDEM 2013 - http://xen-orchestra.com

14. Design research
Vates : Open source solutions
http://vates.fr
FOSDEM 2013 - http://xen-orchestra.com

15. XO today
● Cache strategy based on XCP events is
successfully implemented
● Tested with 6 XCP servers and 3 pools
● Basic display of all VMs is working
● XO-Web and XO-Server are totally decoupled
(2 different Git repository)
● Local users and permissions are OK
Vates : Open source solutions
http://vates.fr
FOSDEM 2013 - http://xen-orchestra.com

16. XO layout
Vates : Open source solutions
http://vates.fr
FOSDEM 2013 - http://xen-orchestra.com

17. XO layout
Vates : Open source solutions
http://vates.fr
FOSDEM 2013 - http://xen-orchestra.com

18. XO next months
● Basic XenCenter like features
(VM/server/pool/storage management)
● Fine-grained permissions + LDAP compatible
backend
● Display VM console in web pages
● More ideas from community
Vates : Open source solutions
http://vates.fr
FOSDEM 2013 - http://xen-orchestra.com

19. XO this year
● Implement overview interface researches in
web pages
● Possibilities are endless with modular design
– Statistics plugin (e.g load analysis)
– Triggered actions (e.g green choices)
– We can imagine 3rd party software integration (e.g
Puppet?)
Vates : Open source solutions
http://vates.fr
FOSDEM 2013 - http://xen-orchestra.com

20. Follow us
● Website project: https://xen-orchestra.com
● Ideas: https://xenorchestra.uservoice.com
● Come talk to us just after this talk (over a
beer!)
● We'll be at Xen booth tomorrow around 11am
Vates : Open source solutions
http://vates.fr
FOSDEM 2013 - http://xen-orchestra.com

21. That's all folks!
● Precise roadmap will be released next week.
● First available release with basic features:
(production ready) -> March 2013
● Release rate depends of our work load.
● AGPL licence
● Any questions?
Vates : Open source solutions
http://vates.fr
FOSDEM 2013 - http://xen-orchestra.com