Archived/Xen Roadmap/4.3

Proposed timeline

We are planning on a 9-month release cycle. Based on that, below are our estimated dates:

• Feature Freeze: 1 March, 2013
• First RC: 15 April 2013
• Release: 1 June 2013

The RCs and release will of course depend on stability and bugs, and will therefore be fairly unpredictable. The feature freeze may be slipped for especially important features which are near completion.

Feature list

Below is a list of features we're tracking for this release. If you have updates to a tracked feature you are working on, or are working on a feature and wish it to be tracked, please let me know.

* Event channel scalability 
  owner: attilio@citrix
  status: ?
  Increase limit on event channels (currently 1024 for 32-bit guests,
  4096 for 64-bit guests)

* NUMA scheduler affinity
  owner: dario@citrix

* NUMA Memory migration 
  owner: dario@citrix

* PVH mode, domU (w/ Linux) 
  owner: mukesh@oracle

* PVH mode, dom0 (w/ Linux) 
  owner: mukesh@oracle

* ARM server port 
  owner: ijc@citrix

* blktap3 
  owner: @citrix

* Default to QEMU upstream
 - qemu-based stubdom (Linux or BSD libc)
    owner: anthony@citrix
    qemu-upstream needs a more fully-featured libc than exists in
    minios.  Either work on a minimalist linux-based stubdom with
    glibc, or port one of the BSD libcs to minios.

 - pci pass-thru 
    owner: anthony@citrix

* Persistent grants 
  owner: @citrix

* Multi-page blk rings
 - blkback in kernel (konrad@oracle, ?@intel)
 - qemu blkback

* Multi-page net protocol
  owner: ?
  expand the network ring protocol to allow multiple pages for
  increased throughput

* Scalability: 16TiB of RAM
  owner: jan@suse

* xl vm-{export,import}
  owner: ?
  Allow xl to import and export VMs to other formats; particularly
  ovf, perhaps the XenServer format, or more.
  

* xl USB pass-through for PV guests
  owner: ?
  - Port the xend PV pass-through functionality to xl.
  - Make sure qemu-based USB with qemu-upstream works
  - Upstream the Linux frontend/backend drivers 

* openvswitch toostack integration
  owner: roger@citrix
  status: Sample script posted by Bastian ("[RFC] openvswitch support script")

* Rationalized backend scripts (incl. driver domains)
  owner: roger@citrix

* Linux console improvements
  owner: jan@suse
  -EHCI debug port (done, to be submitted)
  -xHCI debug port
  -Firewire

* CPUID-based idle (don't rely on ACPI info f/ dom0)
  owner: jan@suse
  (done, to be submitted)

* Remove hardcoded mobprobe's in xencommons
  owner: ?

* Make storage migration possible
  owner: ?
  There needs to be a way, either via command-line or via some hooks,
  that someone can build a "storage migration" feature on top of libxl
  or xl.

* Full-VM snapshotting
  owner: ?
  Have a way of coordinating the taking and restoring of VM memory and
  disk snapshots.  This would involve some investigation into the best
  way to accomplish this.

* VM Cloning
  owner: ?
  Again, a way of coordinating the memory and disk aspects.  Research
  into the best way to do this would probably go along with the
  snapshotting feature.

* PV audio (audio for stubdom qemu)
  owner: stefano.panella@citrix

* Memory: Replace PoD with paging mechanism
  owner: george@citrix

* Managed domains?

[[Category:Xen 4.3]