New project - XenAdminQt - a cross-platform GNU/Linux, macOS, Windows native thick client

benapetr

Here are some more screenshots from debian:

bvitnik

@benapetr This looks phenomenal. Will have to give it a try.

This is a nice coincidence. Just the other day one of my younger colleagues boasted about making XCP-ng Center work under Wine... everything just works. It would save a number of folks having to have a Windows VM on stand by just for the XCP-ng Center. Oh boy, how he was disappointed when I showed him everything that does not work ... but with this, there is still hope.

benapetr

@bvitnik yes I also spent years trying to get the original C# client to work, even using mono etc. I know C#, but it's just hard-wired into windows too much, it literally hooks into some Win32 .dlls and then some other (for RDP service etc.)

This is a native client in C++ it has 0 deps on Windows. The RDP integration is one of those things that are missing now, but there is already a stub code using xrdp library, it just needs finishing and is really a low prio, I never really used that RDP integration anyway, native VNC based console is good enough.

Greg_E

@benapetr
Pretty cool project, might be handy to learn to work with this.

Question: Will it run on a raspberry pi with a 1280x720 display? Specifically a Clockwork Pi uConsole with CM4 Rpi module with 8gb or ram.

That's my emergency computing device for when things fail, only thing it is missing is a kvm to USB module to look at BIOS on a server.

benapetr

@Greg_E most likely yes, RAM wouldn't be problem, since it's a C++ app it only needs little of it. On macOS when connected to large cluster with many VMs and consoles it shows 110MB usage.

It just needs X11 or wayland compatible environment to start

Greg_E

@benapetr

Thanks, I will have to play with this when I have time.

benapetr

I made a first "demonstrator" preview release for macOS, will upload .deb and .rpm packages as well: https://github.com/benapetr/XenAdminQt/releases/tag/v0.0.1-alpha

benapetr

I just released 0.0.2 https://github.com/benapetr/XenAdminQt/releases/tag/v0.0.2-alpha

The first version was really just a proof-of-concept demonstration, this second version is already pretty usable. It can handle all basic stuff, including provisioning of new VMs, VM control (start / stop / suspend / pause), force actions, parallel connections to multiple clusters etc. etc.

Status of what is tested and works and what does:

# Needs work
* Menu items
* Tree view - should show Virtual Disks, Networks in objects view
* Pool HA tab missing
* Actions and commands, see actions todo
* Performance tab
* Search tab has unfinished options panel
* VM import / export
* Folder and tag views
* Network tab (host) - needs finish and test, especially wizards and properties
* New pool wizard
* New storage wizard
* New VM wizard
* VM deleting
* HA tab
* NIC tab - bonding
* Clone VM
* Create template from VM
* Create VM from template

# Needs polish
* General tab - shows data, but access to data is weird (should use native XenObjects and their properties instead of scrapping QVarianMaps), overall layout is also not good
* Memory tabs - they already work, but could look better
* Console - it works most of the time, but there are random scaling issues during boot, RDP not supported
* UI - menus and toolbar buttons sometime don't refresh on events (unpause -> still shows force shutdown)

# Needs testing
* VM disk resize
* VM disk move
* VM live migration
* VM cross pool migration
* Properties of Hosts, VMs and Pools
* VM deleting
* Options
* Maintenance mode

# Finished and tested
* Add server
* Connection to pool - redirect from slave to master
* Connection persistence
* Basic VM controls (start / reboot / shutdown)
* Pause / Unpause
* Suspend / Resume
* Snapshots
* VM disk management (create / delete / attach / detach)
* SR attach / detach / repair stack
* CD management
* Grouping and search filtering (clicking hosts / VMs in tree view top level)
* Tree view (infrastructure / objects)
* Events history
* Network tab (VM)
* Host command -> Restart toolstack

benapetr

I also added windows build so that people can help with testing also on windows. It's a static build, no need for installer, just single zipped .exe file. No dependencies.

benapetr

I just released 0.0.3 https://github.com/benapetr/XenAdminQt/releases/tag/v0.0.3-alpha it brings it even closer to the original client, with packages for macos, debian12, debian13, ubuntu 22, ubuntu 24, Fedora 43, windows