[Xen-devel] Re: [Xen-users] Xen 4.1 Feature Request List

[Pasi Kärkkäinen <pasik@xxxxxx>]

On Wed, Apr 07, 2010 at 04:13:07AM -0700, Grant McWilliams wrote:
> 
>    These might not be wishes for 4.1 as some may be too big but they're my
>    wishlist anyway. Note they also might not be things that belong to the
>    Hypervisor but rather to tools associated with.
> 
>     1. Make qcow2 actually work and include backing files.
> 

Have you checked out blktap2 VHD support? Does it work for you? 

See: http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenCommonProblems
for links.

>          1. If it can't be made to work then it should be taken out and not
>             mentioned in the docs so we don't waste weeks trying to get it to
>             work.
> 

>From which docs?

>     2. Figure out why you can't start a VM with a disk image residing in a
>        ramdisk (bug?)

I have never tried this one. Which disk backend did you use? 

>     3. Nesting
> 
>          1. As silly as this feature sounds it may be why I leave Xen for
>             KVM. This would be useful for teaching management of VMs. A
>             student could have a Dom0 and start up DomUs inside it without
>             each on needing their own physical machine.
> 

There was a presentation about Xen 'nested' virtualization at Xen Summit 2009:
http://www.xen.org/files/xensummit_intel09/xensummit-nested-virt.pdf

Youtube also has some videos about the presentation.

>     4. Install PV DomU from CD without FTP/NFS tricks.
> 
>          1. I don't care how it's done but it would be nice. The "install
>             from network" shuffle can pose a complexity for people getting
>             started in Xen. I'm aware that HVM does this because of it's use
>             of Qemu but it would be nice everywhere. Maybe as Xen moves to
>             Hybrid VMs instead of PV/HVM this will no longer be an issue.
> 

There has been work for hybrid HVM+PV Xen guests recently by Intel and Citrix.

The problem of booting PV domU installers from a CD/.iso is the fact
that the CD needs to have a Xen PV kernel included! Many images don't have that.

This is changing now when distros ship kernels with pvops Xen domU support 
enabled,
it has been in the mainline Linux for a couple of years now.

>    I'm sure I'll think of others but that's off the top of my head. Like I
>    said maybe some of it would be Xen 5 stuff, I don't know.
> 

-- Pasi


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