Currently the Xen Project’s automatic testing setup runs on a small set of hardware in space borrowed from Citrix. Because it’s on the Citrix network, it’s not possible to give access to other community members. The underlying systems are creaking rather. And the system is too small – we already find that testing is rather too slow.
The Xen Project Test Framework Working Group has agreed to press forward with a plan to provide a new setup (in a public colo, probably). We have a budget for this from the Advisory Board, which we think will be sufficient to provide a bigger and better setup than we have now.
We have decided to separate this immediately pressing concern – the inadequate and inaccessible hosting – from the longer-term questions of how to make more use of Xen community members’ existing test software. In particular, we have deferred the question of whether to stick with the existing osstest system long-term, or move to another system such as Citrix’s XenRT.
We’ll consider whether, when and how to make such a transition after we have sorted out our underlying infrastructure. We will make sure that the hardware and facilities we are organising now will be suitable for whatever software system we might want to run.
So, our immediate task now is to set out a more detailed plan for the amount and kind of hardware to acquire, and to identify a suitable hosting facility.
