[Xen-API] XCP 1.6 release status update

[Mike McClurg <mike.mcclurg@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

I just wanted to give a status update on the XCP 1.6 release. I have
updated the XCP Roadmap [1] to reflect the following information.

XCP 1.6 is currently at beta 2, and we had been scheduled to publish the
final release on Wednesday. We are going to slip this date by a couple
weeks, and issue another beta release. I don't have a firm date on when
the either the third beta or the final release will ship. I can tell you
that this will not be a repeat of the XCP 1.5 eternal beta. I promise.

Here is the current state of things:

Our test day on 9 October was successful in that it uncovered a number
of issues which need to be fixed before we can publish a final XCP.
These are the issues which we found:

1) Install splash screen shows Citrix XenServer.

This is minor, but easy to fix.

2) Severe performance degradation with XenCenter attached.

This is due to a bug with the event subsystem which causes all events
for all xapi objects to be returned on each event request, instead of
the ones the user has requested. This results in quite a bit of extra
network traffic, as well as causing xapi to use up 10-20% CPU when "idle".

The bug has been found and a fix is being tested now. This will be
included in the next beta.

3) Upgrade issues.

There are several issues with upgrading:

- Host upgrade from 1.1 doesn't work without patching the installer and
modifying the file /etc/xensource-inventory on the host prior to
upgrading. There is a patch on the mailing list that I'm working to
integrate, but I need to test it to make sure it doesn't break other
upgrades.

- Pool upgrade from 1.1 is untested (by me). Does anyone have anything
to report on this?

- Host upgrade from 1.5 works as of beta 2.

- Pool upgrade from 1.5 does not work without shutting down VMs. VMs
cannot be migrated off of XCP 1.5 hosts during an upgrade. I'm trying to
figure out a workaround for this, but it may require a patch to XCP 1.5
hosts prior to upgrading.

The root cause of the upgrade issues has been a change in the way that
XCP reports its version. This change was made to make it easier to
distinguish XCP hosts from XenServer hosts by their versions, and to
make it easy to compare versions of XCP hosts to XenServer hosts.
Unfortunately, this change makes it difficult for the host installer to
recognize the correct version information on older hosts, and causes a
bug in xapi on XCP 1.5 when it tries to migrate to newer hosts.

These are the issues that we're working on. I would much rather delay
the XCP 1.6 final release to make sure it's good as it can be, than to
ship it with these known defects. I hope everyone agrees that it will be
worth the wait.

Mike

[1] http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/XCP_Roadmap

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