[xen-tools] ANNOUNCE: Argos

[Steve Kemp]

  Previously there were some promises of discussion about a successor
 to the mothballed Argo project.  The intention was to create a new
 system which would allow the management of Xen guests running upon
 an arbitrary number of Xen hosts.

  Despite a lot of people being interested this discussion didn't
 really start getting productive until this week.

  So now its time to announce what has happened.

  With the assistance of Jamie van Dyke we have a new project
 started and going quite well.  Named Argos, as a simple link
 with the previous project.

  The intention is that the software will run something like this:

   * Each Xen host/dom0 will run a small agent program.

   * There is "a central server" which contacts each agent and can
     instruct them to do things;

        - list running instances
        - list shutdown instances
        - list all instances, regardless of running/not-running
        - start domU
        - shutdown domU
        - fetch information about a domU

  The transport mechanism between the nodes and the central
 server isn't public (in the sense that it is supposed to be
 just magic.)

  However the central server will offer a public XMLRPC API 
 that may be used to write a fully-featured Xen control panel
 in a portable and language neutral fashion.

  For the first release I'm anticipating two control applications;
 a web-based Ruby on Rails client, and also a command line shell.

  So far the shell is feature complete, but not pretty.  The
 RoR client is still in development, but once it is complete
 we'll know that the XMLRPC API is complete enough to be useful.


  The shell looks something like this:

  skx#> nodelist     <-  List nodes
      mine
      yours
      localhost

  skx#> node mine    <-  Take control of xen host "mine[.my.flat]"
  skx# [mine]>

  skx# [mine]> list  <-  list xen guests
  Running:
        nfsclient.my.flat
        builder.my.flat
        cfmaster.my.flat
  Not running:
        steve.my.flat

   skx# [mine]> boot steve.my.flat
   skx# [mine]> exit

  Simple, but effective.  The listing of nodes and clients can
 be filtered by regular expressions and the shell will have tab
 completion support once I can get my head around Ruby some more.

  Ruby?  The whole project is written in Ruby.  A shock for
 people who assume I can only live with Perl ;)


  If you're interested in trying it out there is a stub webpage
 here:

    http://xen-tools.org/software/argos/

  A CVS repository is located here:

    http://argos.cvsrepository.org/

  I'll look forward to any comments, bug reports, suggestions
 or patches either on or off the list.

Steve
-- 
http://www.steve.org.uk/