A new Xen community project launches

Stephen Spector, senior program manager for Xen.org, announced a new community-led project on the community Web site. Officially launched this week, the new program is being called the “Xen Introspection Project.”

Spector said the purpose of the new project is to “design an API for performing VM introspection and implement the necessary functionality into Xen.”

The project is anticipated to include the following activities:

• Identification of specific services/functions that introspection should support
• Discussions of how that functionality could be achieved under the Xen architecture
• Prioritization of functionality and activities
• API definitions
• Implementation

So what are the potential application uses for Xen Introspection? Spector says it can include security, forensics, debugging, and systems management.

To keep people informed about the project, a new Xen Wiki section has been setup with three new pages: Project Information, Meeting Minutes, and Project Updates.