Re: [Xen-API] What is XCP iso 'under-the-hood'?

[Andreas Hilboll <lists@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Mike,

thanks for your answer!

> It's true that XCP 1.6 is based on CentOS 5.7. However, XCP is a highly
> customized version of CentOS, and should really be thought of as a
> standalone Linux distribution, and not just some apps built on top of
> CentOS. For instance, while it is possible to install software in XCP
> via yum, it is not encouraged to do so, as running a command like 'yum
> upgrade' would overwrite important custom software, like LVM.

Can I get a list of packages available in the XCP iso install? I think
the really important points where I believe having a "regular" CentOS
would be beneficial are:

a.) monitoring of the hardware RAID (via the CLI available at
http://www.areca.us/support/s_linux/cli/linuxcli_V1.10.0_120815.zip, and
optionally the HTTP interface available at
http://www.areca.us/support/s_linux/http/linuxhttp_V2.2.3_120815.zip and
the SNMP agent available at
http://www.areca.us/support/s_linux/snmp/linuxsnmp_V4.1_110113.zip)
b.) bonding of the two ethernet interfaces for having better performance
c.) nagios/icinga agent
c.) having rsync available
d.) having rsnapshot available

Well, actually, a.) and b.) and c.) are important, and d.) and e.) would
be nice-to-have.

Would you recommend going the XCP iso way with these requirements? Maybe
some of the points are no problem, because they're already available in
XCP iso. Your comments are greatly appreciated!

> Basically, the XCP iso is meant to be treated as a "black box" style
> appliance which isn't supposed to be mucked about with (unless you know
> what you're doing!). If you're willing to play around with getting
> Puppet to work with XCP, I would be ever grateful to you for writing up
> a HOWTO on the wiki. But I expect you might need to do a bit of
> tinkering, because XCP won't act like your standard CentOS install.

If I actually do something like this, I will of course make it publicly
available and let you guys know!

> The XCP toolstack packages (xcp-xapi and its dependencies) were meant to
> serve the purpose of a hackable installation of XCP. Unfortunately, the
> current state of XCP toolstack packages is not where we'd like them to
> be. The code in the current release is a snapshot from somewhere
> directly after the 1.5 beta was released, and hasn't been updated yet.
> We're planning on getting snapshots from the 1.6 branch up and running
> soon, but it probably won't happen until around March next year.

Good to know, thanks for the info!

Cheers, Andreas.


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