openstack team mailing list archive

[Cristian Tomoiaga <ctomoiaga@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Everyone,

I need to deploy a few servers and I decided to go with Xen and libxl (no
XCP or XenServer or KVM and no libvirt if possible. I'll explain at the end
of this message why).

I need Cinder (volume storage) with local storage. I know Cinder doesn't
"support" local storage right now. I should be able to modify the lvm
driver and remove the iSCSI part. Do the same for nova and by my
understanding this should work. Of course some other modifications will be
needed, eg availability zones a.s.o., but I believe it can be done in a
short period of time (unless I am missing something). I notice there was a
discussion about this at the summit. If anyone has the video recording of
it, I would appreciate it.
Should I add a blueprint for this ? Note that both Cinder and Nova will
have to be modified, maybe some filters and other stuff also if I plan on
adding something other than availability zones which is not actually meant
for this particular case.
I would like to skip libvirt for this. Maybe I am wrong but do I really
need another layer in front of this ? May help to speed up the development.
As for the nova part I would be grateful for some pointers. I may actually
need to work with libvirt if there is a need to clean nova and avoid adding
more code that needs to be maintained.
I really need to see what was discussed at the summit related to local
storage.

As for the compute part, I may need to work with libvirt but I want to
avoid that if possible. Libxl was meant for stacks right ? Again, this may
not be acceptable and I would like to know.

Why Xen ? (I may have been mislead so please correct me)
I like the architecture, security features and maturity. I don't like
complexity (eg Xapi) and I want to be able to use dm-thin when it will be
ready (probably by the time RHEL 7 comes out). Not sure when XCP and
XenServer will go with that.
I didn't like the way the development of XCP went. It was behind XenServer
and as much as I appreciate the work, for some reason I don't like the way
Citrix treats XCP. A security issue appears and we end up using a mirror
with unsigned packages. Don't get me wrong, I really appreciate the effort
but this and other things like it lead me to believe XCP is not for
production (although I am actually using XCP right now in production, but I
started some time ago when XCP first appeared).
Regarding KVM, I did not use it until now. I don't like the fact the
security issues pop up more often then I would like (I may be wrong ?).
There are other reasons but are not important in my decision.

Should I go with Libxl or stick to libvirt ? Should I start to work on
local storage or has someone already started and I should contact him ?

I appreciate your feedback on this!

-- 
Regards,
Cristian Tomoiaga