The OpenMirage project is seeking to become a Xen.org hosted project, as defined in the Xen Governance process. To become a Xen.org hosted project, a project proposal is needed that is first submitted for community review. The review is followed by a vote by eligible community members, which if successfull adds the project to the Xen.org incubator. The project can then graduate as outlined in the Xen Governance process.
I posted the proposal for community review on the xen mailing lists earlier this week: the community review is open 23:59 (GMT), 27th of Jan, 2013.
What is Open Mirage?
The following recording of a XenSummit presentation by Anil Madhavapeddy, the Mirage project lead, introduces the project, explains why it is relevant to Xen.org and concludes with some interesting benchmarks and discussion.
In a nutshell, Mirage allows to easily build microkernels that are combined with applications which are then called Mirage appliances. These appliances do not require an operating system, as they directly use the Xen Hypervisor, in effect treating the Xen hypervisor as an abstracted hardware platform. Mirage appliances are highly performant, small and secure and can be run on any Xen based cloud or hosting service.
An example of a Mirage appliance is the openmirage.org website, which is a self-hosted site deployed on the public cloud (in this case, on Amazon EC2). Other powerful use-cases for Mirage are based on encapsulating existing software using Mirage: for example one could combine Mirage with a Content Management System such as Drupal or Joomla and build an appliance that auto-configures and deploys directly into a public cloud (e.g. Rackspace or Amazon EC2).
Where is the Proposal? Can I review it?
Anybody in the Xen community can review and comment on the project proposal. Please follow the review conventions as outlined here.
The Mirage project is an extremely interesting project that complements existing projects hosted on Xen.org. I am looking forward to your review comments.
