Archived/XCP Roadmap

XCP Release Timeline

For previous releases see: XCP_Release_History

Here is a rough guide to future releases.

XCP 1.5

Status: Permanent Beta
Last updated: 14th February 2012
Next status update due: Unknown

XCP 1.5 is version-compatible with XenServer 6.0. It's the first XCP release to be based on Xen 4.1. We have some internal work to do both on our build system and xapi before we can release XCP 1.5, but after we complete this work it will be much easier for us to release stable versions of XCP along with XenServer stable releases. This means that after these changes, there won't be any more long delays between XCP stable releases and XenServer releases.

Features that will likely make it into XCP 1.5:

• Xen hypervisor 4.1
• vSwitch is the default networking stack
• Ubuntu guest support
• Debian Squeeze guest support (32b/64bit)
• Updated RHEL 6.0 support
• Experimental SLES 10 SP4 support
• Experimental Solaris guest support
• Active-Passive NIC Bonding Support for vSwitch
• Rolling Pool Upgrade improvements

XCP 1.6

Current status

• Status: Beta 2 released
  
• Last updated: 8 Oct 2012
  
• Next status update due: End of October
  

Current known issues with Beta 2:

1. Boot from CD splash screen shows "Citrix XenServer" (minor, in progress)
2. Rolling pool upgrade from 1.5 doesn't allow VM migration from 1.5 host to 1.6 host (blocker, in progress)
3. Performance issue with XenCenter connected (blocker, code complete)

Timeline for release

• Beta 1: 1 Oct
  
• Beta 2: 8 Oct (fixed upgrade functionality)
  
• Test day: 9 Oct
  
• Beta 3: TBA
• Final release: 24 Oct TBA

See this e-mail thread for more info on the beta 3 and final release date.

Feature summary

XCP 1.6 is version-compatible with XenServer 6.1

Features include:

• Storage XenMotion (cross pool live migration and live VDI migration)
• Enhanced guest support: Ubuntu 12.04, CentOS/REL 6.2, Windows 8
• Updates: Xen 4.1.2, 2.6.32.43, CentOS 5.7
• Open vSwitch 1.4.2
• LACP bonding
• Performance and scalability improvements
  • Ability to pin Dom0 vCPU
  • Up to 4 VM starts can now be concurrent
• IPv6 support (experimental)

XCP 2.0

Status: Planning/Design
Last updated: 2nd August 2012
Next status update due: End of September

Features likely to be included:

• Xen 4.2, Linux 3.x, CentOS 6.x
• First steps towards Dom0 disaggregation

Possible features for future XCP releases

Cloud

• Cross-pool VM.migrate / VM.copy coming in 1.6
• IPV6 support coming in 1.6
• "Shard" the pool metadata db
• ceph and libvirt: see the Ceph and libvirt technology preview

Appliances

• v4v for non-IP inter-domain comms
• Detect pending updates for appliances

Performance and Scalability

• Expose NUMA topology via XenAPI
• Stubdoms for intensive ops (eg VM export)
• XCP storage driver domains

Robustness

• Enable Xen Security Modules
• Pvgrub (or pygrub in helper domain)