Xen Orchestra 3.5

Olivier Lambert

• 3 min read

Less than three months from the previous release, and during a very busy summer for us, we officially released XO 3.5 with approximatively 20 bug fixes/enhancements. Explore what's new in this article!

Visible changes

  • Add action buttons in the console view: as requested by Hoerup in this bug report, we added some action buttons (stop/start/reboot) in the console view. Very useful, see for yourself:

buttons_console_red

  • Better process in VM creation when you forgot to fill some fields:
    forgot

  • Allow a real force shutdown if a VM fails.

  • Fix a Safari display issue. Enjoy XO, Apple users ;)

  • Avoid removal of the last user.

  • Auto redirect to the home page after deleting a VM.

  • We added Linux icon for Fedora distributions in the home view.

  • Properly handle a shutdown host in a pool in one click:
    As you can see, there is 2 running VMs on the first host ("Lab1"). But we choose to shutdown it:

sh1

A confirmation message is requested:

sh2

Then, automatically, every VM is auto-migrated to the other host:

sh3

At the end, "lab1" is halted:

sh4

As you can see, no big changes, but a smooth user experience.

Under the hood

This release is an important step for the project, for various reasons:

  • we finished to migrate the whole software on NPM: it gives us a better way to package it and a clean release cycle. This decision is really important for now and the future.
  • we are using Browserify now. It helps to simplify the architecture of "xo-web" and reduce the maintenance.
  • we migrated our HTML page to use Jade templates. Less painful to modify our views.
    Those actions are just the beginning of a longer journey.

New Appliance (XOA 3.5) with xo-backup and xo-cli included

A completely new appliance, with:

  • a better and easier upgrade system (thanks to NPM integration)
  • xo-cli and xo-backup!
  • Kernel 3.14 (Debian Jessie)
  • Ultra fast boot time with SystemD (also used for starting XO automatically and restart it if it crashes)
  • size reduced, from 745 to less than 561MB.

Download

You can try the appliance on this page. As we managed to use NPM now, the upgrade process from a previous version in the not recommended and not supported (because we used GIT before). If you want a custom appliance (pre-configured with static IP address of proxy settings), contact us.

Complete change log is accessible here.

Demo

The demo is always accessible with user "demo" and password "demo" (read only rights). Enjoy :)

What's next?

xo4

This version is probably the last of 3.x branch (that being said, security fixes can always been released). Yes, it means we'll start to work on first feature on our roadmap ;)

The next big event will be the Xen User Summit in September in NYC: we hope to deliver a first preview of 4.0 there.

It's all about users and permissions, here is a small hint:

permissions