Re: [Xen-users] xen client side package.

["Todd Deshane" <deshantm@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Jd,

I think that ConVirt looks like it has a lot of potential, but in my
personal experience, I haven't had very good luck with it.

I have some included some suggestions and comments based on your
questions below.

On Sun, Aug 10, 2008 at 11:04 PM, jd <jdsw2002@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi
>   As you might have noticed that ConVirt http://www.convirt.net now supports  
> both Xen as well as KVM platforms. I am looking for a smallest footprint xen 
> client package that can manage remote Xen Nodes via xml-rpc / xen-api. This 
> would help,
>

You should work with the Xen API team to make sure that you have
included the proper xen-api
see:
http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenApi

>     -- Xen users interested in managing Xen on the remote box only

I frequently talk to many users (industry/academic/etc.) that would
like to do this.

>     -- KVM only users,

I don't think there would be a need to separate the functionality,
unless there are
users that need a special case small installation size.

>     -- and evaluating possibility of win32 ConVirt client

I think this could lead to more widespread use of ConVirt.

>  On Fedora the xen-libs pacakge does not seem to contain the python stuff 
> while the xen package seems to contain dependency on xen kernel, virt-* etc.
> Also, would like to know distribution specific package factoring for the same 
> as well.

One of the biggest problems is that it, even with the latest version
of ConVirt that I tried, requires a patched version of Paramiko
and doesn't usually work well out of the box. It is unclear from the
documentation alone why the patch is being applied.

It should also be clearly stated in the docs what changes that are
need to be made to the xend config file to get the remote access to
work. Running the scripts should be done in the install (if it is not
done that way already) and backups of the config files should be made,
then just notify the user of the changes and give them a way to roll
back the changes if needed to disable remote management.

If the basic functionality worked well out of the box, it could
compete with virt-manager. A windows version could give it an even
larger user base.

Also, last I knew there was an open bug [1] missing the xenman/convirt
package. Ubuntu is a popular general purpose desktop and
having (minimally) remote support that works from that would help the
user base too.

[1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xen-meta/+bug/215558

Cheers,
Todd

-- 
Todd Deshane
http://todddeshane.net
check out our book: http://runningxen.com

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