Xen Project User Survey

We are planning a Xen Project User Survey. This page is a scratch pad to outline the questions in the survey, such that everyone can see what we are planning to cover. Feel free to use the {{Comment}} template to comment on questions: simply use {{comment|~~~~}} your comment and a comment using your user ID will automatically be added.

Patterns and Platforms

I believe we have a survey monkey account. Some of the questions require either a way of ranking features and/or system properties or awarding a number of limited points to features/system properties/etc, as otherwise we will not get good data.

There are two ways of doing this

• Rating Scale : the issue here is that people are encouraged to rate everything highly and that thus we don't get good date
  • Investigating this further forced ranking questions seem to be the way to go - see question 3/2 ... not quite sure how to create them
• Ranking Questions : this looks ideal, but it is not clear what happens with the default order. There is a risk that people will just stick with the default, which could skew the default
• Quotas : It is not exactly clear how these work from the documentation and what the user experience is like

Survey

Preamble

The Xen Project is conducting its first annual user survey. This data could be used as part of an upcoming report on trends within the Xen Project, to prioritize feature development and may help influence the future direction of the project. We would appreciate your help in taking five minutes to share your experiences with us.

 Lars.kurth 10:43, 30 April 2014 (UTC) Need to test the survey for length and update the item above

 dunlapg 12 May 2014 "Could be used"? Seems a bit of a strange thing to say -- why not just say "will be used"?

If you would like to be entered in our drawing for one of two $500 Amazon.com gift cards, please enter your email address at the end of the survey.

 Lars.kurth 10:43, 30 April 2014 (UTC) Need to get funding for any prices

Use of Virtualization and Cloud

In the last 12 months, what best describes your organization's actions around server expansion (including physical or virtualized server or cloud server instances)?

Matrix:

• Questions: Linux, Windows, Unix, Other OS
• Answers: Added servers, Decreased servers, Neither added nor decreased servers, Not sure

How would you rate your organization’s progress toward cloud adoption?

How would you rate your organization’s progress toward cloud adoption?

• We have no plans to move to the cloud
• We have started evaluating our options for moving into the cloud
• We have started moving to the cloud but have a long way to go
• We have moved some workloads to the cloud and are satisfied with our current situation
• We have moved some workloads to the cloud and plan to do more
• Not sure
• Comments:

 dunlapg 12 May 2014 Are you talking about public cloud, private cloud, or either one? It sounds like you're talking about public cloud.

What is your current cloud model?

What is your current cloud model?

• Mostly private cloud
• Mostly public cloud
• Hybrid cloud
• We are not in the cloud
• Not sure

What workloads are you currently running on within a VM (select all that apply)?

Matrix:

• Questions: Application and Web Servers, Development Environments / Tools / Languages, Relational / Enterprise Databases, Email Systems, Desktop Productivity Applications, Systems Management, Standalone, Single-user Databases, CRM, ERP, Other
• Answers: Presently Running, Plan to Run, Not Planning to Run

What best describes your work with the following open source Virtualization solutions in the next 12 months?

Matrix:

• Questions: Containers, KVM, Xen Project, Other
• Answers: Not Aware Of, Evaluating, Plan to Deploy, In Deployment, Don’t Plan to Deploy, Don’t Know

 dunlapg 12 May 2014 Maybe "your plans with the following..."? Also, why not put Xen Project first? :-)

What best characterizes your perception of Xen Project software?

What best characterizes your perception of Xen Project software?

• Improving
• Staying the same
• Declining
• Comments:

 dunlapg 12 May 2014 I'm not sure I understand what "software is declining" is supposed to mean. In any case I don't think prompting someone into thinking, "Is Xen declining?" is a good idea. Maybe it would be better to do an "agree / disagree" scale on several aspects of development, such as: "Xen performance is continually improving", "Xen is continually developing new features", "Xen is on the cutting egde of new developments for the cloud", &c.  14:16, 21 May 2014 (UTC) Agreed. I copied these first set of questions from the Linux enterprise user survey. Also, it should probably just be Xen Project. The idea was that we could then correlate to it

Use of Xen Project

• I neither use Xen Project software or participate in the Xen Project community : skip this section

Which Xen Project Software are you using?

Matrix
Questions: Xen Project Hypervisor, XCP or XAPI packages, Mirage OS
Answers: Not Aware Of, Evaluating, Plan to Deploy, In Deployment, Don’t Plan to Deploy, Don’t Know

Please state the latest version of Xen Project Software that you use (text box, or drop down including "Don’t Know" and "N/A")

• Xen Project Hypervisor : 3.x, 4.0, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4
• XCP or XAPI packages : 1.0, 1.1, 1.6, XAPI packages in Debian, XAPI packages in Ubuntu, migrated to XenServer
• Mirage OS is not applicable as we are at 1.x only

How large is your Xen Project Deployment?

• 0-10 hosts
• 11-50 hosts
• 51-100 hosts
• 101-500 hosts
• 500-1000 hosts
• More than 1000 hosts

 Rcpavlicek 11:54, 15 May 2014 (UTC)Need a "not sure" choice. Person responding may not know total scale of installation.

Hardware

• I use Xen Project for embedded or other non-data center use-cases : skip this section

Servers

Who is your primary Server Vendor for Xen Project hosts?

• Server vendor (HP, Dell, IBM, Cisco, Fujitsu, Quanta, Supermicro, Other

How many CPU cores does the average server in your deployment have?

• Small (1-2), Medium (4-8), Large (16-32), Very Large (>64)

 Lars.kurth 13:13, 12 May 2014 (UTC) This may not be a valid categorisation

How much RAM does the average server in your deployment have?

• Small (0 - 63.00), Medium (64 - 127.99), Large (128 - 255.99), Very Large (>256)

What make is your CPU for Xen Project hosts?

• Intel, AMD, ARM, Other

 Rcpavlicek 11:57, 15 May 2014 (UTC)These are fair questions for people in IT operations, but many users will have no idea for any of these answers.

Storage

Who is your primary Storage Vendor for Xen Project hosts?

• NetApp, EMC, HP, Dell, IBM, FusionIO, Hitachi Data Systems, Atlantis, Tintri, Nutanix, Nexenta, Other

Network

Who is your primary Network card vendor

• Intel, Broadcom, QLogic, Emulex, Mellanox, Cisco, Other

What is the lowest/typical/fastest network card in your setup?

• Lowest: 1, 10, 20, 40 Gb/s
• Typical: 1, 10, 20, 40 Gb/s
• Fastest: 1, 10, 20, 40 Gb/s

Please list the primary host Operating System or Commercial Product that you use to get the Xen Project Hypervisor (Dom 0)?

Please list primary the host Operating System or Commercial Product that you use to get the Xen Project Hypervisor (Dom 0)?

• Custom built from source
• Alpine Linux
• CentOS 5.x
• CentOS 6.4+ (Xen4CentOS)
• Debian
• Fedora
• Mageia
• NetBSD
• Ubuntu
• OpenSUSE
• Huawei UVP
• Oracle VM for x86 (OVS)
• Redhat Enterprise Linux 5.x (RHEL)
• SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLES)
• XenServer

 Rcpavlicek 12:01, 15 May 2014 (UTC) Again, if they user is not an IT ops person, they might want to answer "I don't know."

Please list the guest Operating Systems that you use on top of the Xen Project Hypervisor

Pattern: Matrix, one per row
Columns:

• Alpine Linux
• CentOS
• Debian
• Fedora
• FreeBSD
• NetBSD
• OpenSUSE
• Ubuntu
• Oracle Linux
• RHEL
• SUSE Enterprise Linux
• Solaris
• Windows XP/7/8.x
• Windows Server
• Other

Rows: Primary, Secondary, Tertiary

To Do: Am wondering whether we should add a question on Cloud OS'es ...

 dunlapg 12 May 2014 You mean "Operating systems you run as a guest"?  Rcpavlicek 12:13, 15 May 2014 (UTC) We could get skewed data here. The person who knows about the number of hosts may not know the guest information unless it is a fairly uniform deployment. Users who know the guests they use may have guessed at the size of the total install, but their guest usage may not represent the usage of the total install. So weighting the guest data by the host data (which I assume we will do) could result in a false impression.

Which of the following System Characteristics are important to you?

Which of the following System Characteristics are important to you?

Pattern: forced ranking, maybe restrict to 5
Options:

• Commercial Support (commercial support and consulting is available)
• Ease of Use (it is easy to get started, most common use-cases can be performed easily and good documentation is available)
• Performance overhead - CPU (low CPU performance overhead of your workload)
• Performance overhead - Disk and I/O (low disk and other I/O overheads)
• Performance overhead - Network (low network overheads)
• Quality (low number of bugs when deploying your software)
• Reliability and Robustness (an architecture that reduces unexpected errors and reliably recovers in unexpected error situations)
• Scalability (the number of virtual machines that can be run on a single host with good performance)
• Security (additional security functionality such as SELinux, XSM, Disaggregation, vTPM and good security processes)
• Third party solutions (many 3rd party solutions and integrations are available)
• Versatility (the capability to customize your virtualization solution to all of your needs)

 Rcpavlicek 12:17, 15 May 2014 (UTC) Suggest we add "Basic Cloud Functionality (migration, failover)" or something like it; basically someone saying that things like XAPI and Remus are a priority for them

Features (TODO)

To Do: A question about which features are known/used/important (this is tricky from a design perspective)

Format: matrix
Column: Not Aware Of, Evaluating, Plan to Use, In Use, Don’t Plan to Use, Don’t Know

This should at least contain - the challenge will be to label these well and the list is probably too long.

• X86 virtualization modes (aka PV, HVM, PVHVM, PVH)
• XL, XM, XAPI/XE, ...
• Memory Ballooning, Memory Sharing, Memory Paging, TMEM - Transcendent Memory
• Cpupool
• Credit 2 Scheduler, possibly other schedulers
• NUMA scheduler affinity
• Nested Virtualization
• Not sure about: gPXE/iPXE
• Physical CPU Hotplug
• Physical Memory Hotplug
• PCI Passthrough
• Not sure about: X86 Advanced Vector eXtension (AVX
• Live Migration, Save & Restore
• Remus Fault Tolerance
• Not sure about: vMCE
• Blktap2
• Online resize of virtual disks
• Driver Domains
• Device Model Stub Domains
• Memaccess API
• XSM & FLASK
• vTPM Support
• Note sure (are these actually configurable in distros?): Device Models and Virtual Firmware for HVM guests
• Not sure: PyGrub, Grub2, PvGrub, pvnetboot

For the future section could add:

• COLO
• Etc.

3rd party software and integration(TODO)

To Do: A question about which 3rd party software integrations are known/used/important (this is tricky from a design perspective)

Format: matrix
Column: Not Aware Of, Evaluating, Plan to Use, In Use, Don’t Plan to Use, Don’t Know

Lines/Groups:

• Cloud: OpenStack, CloudStack, OpenNebula, Eucalyptus
• Storage: GlusterFS, Ceph, etc.
• Network: OVS, Linux Bridge, OpenDayLight
• Management: Libvirt, XAPI, other
• SPICE

How do you participate in the Xen Project community?

How do you participate in the Xen Project community?

• Actively contribute code
• Test and submit bugs
• Participate in Xen Project activities (events, xenproject.org, attend talks, newsletters, etc)
• We just work with our vendors
• No active participation, but would like to participate more
• No active participation
• Other (please specify)

Future Direction of Xen Project

• I do not plan to use Xen Project software or participate in the Xen Project community : skip this section

To Do: Something covering importance of future features

To Do: Something covering importance of system characteristics (but we have them in the previous section already)

To Do: Something covering importance of misc 3rd party integrations

To Do: Something covering trends: automotive, mobile, embedded, ...

To Do: Something covering importance of community initiatives

General Information

This is a subset of questions from 2014 Enterprise Linux Survey and will help correlate the information into the bigger picture

Which of the following best describes your job title?

Which of the following best describes your job title?

• IT/IS staff
• Director/manager, IT operations
• Director/manager, network systems
• Director/manager, other IT
• CIO
• Consultant
• Vice president, IT or infrastructure
• Line-of-business management
• Security staff
• CEO/president
• Developer
• Other (please specify)

Employer

State your employer (optional)

Approximately how many employees are in your organization?

Approximately how many employees are in your organization?

• Not working for an organization
• Fewer than 50
• 50-99
• 100-499
• 500-999
• 1,000-4,999
• 5,000-9,999
• 10,000 or more
• Don't know/decline to say

What is your organization's primary industry?

What is your organization's primary industry?

• Construction/engineering
• Consulting and business services
• Education
• Electronics
• Financial services
• Food/beverage
• Government
• Healthcare/medical
• Hospitality/travel
• IT vendors
• Manufacturing/industrial, non-computer
• Media/entertainment
• Mobile equipment manufacturer
• Non-profit
• Retail/e-commerce
• Telecommunications/ISPs
• Utilities
• Conglomerate (multiple industries under one Company)
• Other (please specify)

Where are you located?

Where are you located?

• Africa
• Asia
• Australia / New Zealand
• Europe
• Japan
• Middle East
• Mexico and Central America
• South America
• United States and Canada
• Other (please specify)