AB Meeting/August 2013 Minutes

Attendees

People on the call (in random-order):

• James Bulpin (Citrix) [non-voting]
• Mark Hinkle (Citrix) [voting]
• Lars Kurth (Citrix) [non-voting]
• Mike Dolan (Linux Foundation) [non-voting]
• Sherry Hurwitz (AMD)
• Larry Wikelius (Calxeda)
• Matt Wilson: (Amazon)
• Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk (Oracle)
• Ricardo Labiaga (NetAPP)
• Demetrios Coulis (CA)

7 members (Quorum)

Action Update

Open Actions

Off-line update

• 
   Action Matt:: Follow-up with a new (security process) proposal. Proposal would make the membership more transparent and establish a mechanism for expanding the membership to divide work. ✗
• 
   Action James Bulpin:: Find a test maintainer ✗ - Defer to working group, see below
• 
   Action Lars: Fix the "Searching on Google for xen-devel emails ends up pointing to the wrong URL" issue ✓ - Initiated re-indexing of lists.xenproject.org (56,910 of 257,630 pages have been re-indexed; this will probably take another month to complete)

James Bulpin standing down

James is working now in the CTO office and won't be able to spend time in the Xen AB.

Lars Kurth was nominated as the chairman of the group and Mark Hinkle (Citrix) will be the voting member while Lars will be non-voting. No alternatives for Chair were proposed.

Vote|Motion:  Motion PASSED by 7 votes

NetApp joining Xen AB

NetApp customers that use XenServer based solutions need it to integrate well with NetApp storage. This makes NetApp an indirect "consumer" of XenServer. Ricardo is responsible for NetApp's solutions and integrations with Linux technologies. Ricardo's background is in engineering.

Top #3 priorities of Xen AB

For background information, please see the last mail to the advisory board called "Summary of priority discussion, preliminary Xen Project Objectives and Budget (please read before tomorrow's AB meeting)"

#1 Open Source testing framework

Goal: Increase upstream Xen Hypervisor quality including quality of latest CPU/platform features. Address problems with the code in a timely and proactive manner, including defects, security vulnerabilities and performance problems

Oracle, Citrix, Calxeda, and AMD see this as an important work wherein the Xen codebase gets excellent testing and will help in making sure that when companies integrate the new code base it will be in superb condition. As such they will be part of the Test Framework Committee that will drive this.

Phase 1 Update:

• Citrix to make XenRT test code available by the end of August (ETA Aug 23)

Next Steps: Phase 2

• Go/NoGo with XenRT as basis for the test infrastructure
• Where to host? Kevin Clark offered that Verizon could provide space in their data centre.
• Which hardware, platforms and software configs initially?
• Cost phase 2 of project (aka. making the framework generic, migrating to test-as-a-service)

Confirmed Test Framework Committee members:

• AMD (nominate AMD representative)
• AWS (find resource to represent AWS)
• CA (find resource to represent CA)
• Calxeda (nominate Calxeda representative)
• Citrix (nominate Citrix representative)
• Oracle (nominate Oracle representative)

Not on the call:

• Intel (Will Auld will be the Intel representative)

Other companies were not the call and it is unknown of their disposition. NetApp wants to make a decision on whether to join at a later point.

• 
   Action Companies on the call: Companies in above list to nominate individuals to be on the group by the next AB meeting
• 
   Action Member companies that were not on the call: Member companies that were not on the call, and want to join, to step up and nominate representative
• 
   Action Lars: Lars to set up initial meeting

Vote|Motion:  Motion that the OSS TEST FRAMEWORK is a top priority PASSED by 7 votes

#2 Positioning of Xen and PR

Interested parties: Bromium, AWS (positioning only), Calxeda, CA, Citrix, Oracle, Verizon/Terremark

Goal: Maintain and increase momentum around the Xen Project in the industry. In other words, show the world "how Xen is awesome".

Broadly covered

• Messaging Focus Area 1: Security
• Messaging Focus Area 2: Performance / Workloads
• Messaging Focus Area 3: Xen Project Membership, Xen Usage, Xen Releases

Messaging Focus Area 1: Security

Position Xen as the most secure hypervisor (this is Xen's defensible proposition over other hypervisors and need to be capitalized on). This should include the Security Vulnerability Process

Messaging Focus Area 2: Performance / Workloads

Testing Guidelines: How should the community (Developers and End Users) be testing performance in a Xen world and how do we hold that up as a competitive advantage?

Messaging Focus Area 3: Xen Project Membership, Xen Usage, Xen Releases

Use new members of Xen Project Advisory Board, Xen User stories and Xen Project Releases to demonstrate momentum.

Next Steps

Next Steps:

• Establish a Messaging and PR working group

Which vendors want to be the MESSAGING and PR working group?

• Calxeda (nominate Calxeda representative)
• Citrix (nominate Citrix representative)
• Oracle (nominate Oracle representative)

CA and AMD stated that they will likely have a resourcing issues.

• 
   Action Companies in above list: Companies in above list to nominate individuals to be on the working group by the next AB meeting
• 
   Action Member companies that were not on the call: Member companies that were not on the call, and want to join, to step up and nominate representative
• 
   Action Lars: Lars to negotiate a more concrete proposal with Linux Foundation and report back to working group/board
• 
   Action Lars: Lars to set up initial meeting

Vote|Motion:  Motion that MESSAGING and PR is a top priority PASSED by 7 votes

#3 Supporting the Xen Project Developer Community

Goals: Nurture the Xen Project development community and grow the Xen talent pool

Vote|Motion:  Motion that Supporting the Xen Project Developer Community is a top priority PASSED by 7 votes

Preliminary Budget for 2013

Total available: $112,500 Outstanding: $81,250

1) Common Test Infrastructure
1.1) Phase 2 (estimate): $50K

2) Messaging and PR
2.1) PR activities based on initial discussions with Linux Foundation
(pro-rata for Q4 2013, assuming we can negotiate an appropriate deal and trial): $30K

3) Supporting the Xen Project Developer Community
3.1) Developer Meeting at Xen Dev Summit : $6K
3.2) Travel Stipends: $4K

4) House-keeping
4.1) Board Operations: $4K

Sub-total: $94K

5) Foundation Service Charge (15%): $14K (rounded)

Total: $108K

Vote|Motion:  Motion to approve budget PASSED by 7 votes