Introduction

Purpose

Currently if an admin wants to update the hosts connected to Cloudstack. he needs to search the released updates from a given source URL and check the updates as per the applicable XenServer version. Then admin needs to compare them with the already applied patches to find out the available updates. To reduce this effort we are adding this feature to Cloudstack.

This feature will list the available patches/hotfixes for hypervisors connected to Cloudstack and the Cloudstack admin will be able to see the available updates on Cloudstack UI, this is functional specification of feature "XS alert hotfix notification" which has Jira ID CLOUDSTACK-192

References

• CLOUDSTACK-192
• CS-16206

Feature Specifications

• Requirements
  • Search available updates released for applicable XenServer versions and display them on CloudStack dashboard so that admin can see the available updates and apply them manually.
• Non-requirements
  • If the updates are available, admin can install them manually.
• Test guidelines
  • Functional test

• Configuration
  • There are two global configuration parameters:
    • xen.update.url - URL to get latest Xenserver Updates.
    • update.check.interval (in sec) - How frequently should CloudStack check for Xenserver Updates.
• User permission
  • Root-Admin would have privilege to list the available updates.

Use Cases

Admin can check the updates available to any host and install them manually

Admin can decide on how frequently he wants Cloudstack to check for updates and set the interval by changing the global config parameter update.check.interval .

Architecture and Design description

Search for Host Updates

For Xenserver hypervisor, latest information about the updates for any version of Xenserver is available at this location : http://updates.xensource.com/XenServer/updates.xml

Once in a week, thread will check this location to search for updates and fill the database with available updates(if any) or admin can change the time interval to check the updates by changing the value of xen.update.check.interval global config parameter( by default interval is set to check the updates "Once in a week").

List Host Updates

http://MS-SERVER:8096/client/api?command=listHostUpdates&id=&hostid=&applied=true/false

In the above mentioned API link, only hostid is required parameter and the other parameters (id and applied) are optional. If admin wants to list all the patches that are not yet applied to a host, set the applied parameter as false and if admin wants to list the applied ones, set the applied parameter as true. If applied parameter is not passed with the API, it will return the list of all applied and not applied patches. To get the details about the single patch, admin need to pass the id (uuid)* *of the patch.

DB Schema changes

New tables

• host_updates (id, uuid, label, description, label, url, timestamp)

  Field	Type	NULL	Key	Default	Extra
  id	bigint(20) unsigned	NO	PRI	NULL	auto_increment
  uuid	varchar(40)	NO		NULL
  description	varchar(999)	YES		NULL
  label	varchar(40)	YES		NULL
  timestamp	timestamp	YES		NULL
  url	varchar(999)	YES		NULL

• patch_host_ref (id, host_id,patch_id, update_applied)

  Field	Type	NULL	Key	Default	Extra
  id	bigint(20) unsigned	NO	PRI	NULL	auto_increment
  host_id	bigint(20) unsigned	NO	MUL	NULL
  patch_id	bigint(20) unsigned	NO		NULL
  update_applied	tinyint(1)	NO		0

New client APIs

New classes for client APIs

• ListHostUpdatesCmd.java
• HostUpdatesResponse.java

New objects interfaces:

• PatchHostRef.java

New VO and Dao objects:

• HostUpdatesDao.java
• HostUpdatesDaoImpl.java
• HostUpdatesVO.java
• PatchHostRefDao.java
• PatchHostRefDaoImpl.java
• PatchHostVO.java

New managers interfaces and implementation:

• HostUpdatesManager.java
• HostUpdatesManagerImpl.java

Changes to Existing Files:

• Added a new method "searchForHostUpdates" in ManagementService.java and implemented in ManagementServerImpl.java
• Added a new method* in CitrixResourceBase.java to get the information about the applied patches to a host using XAPI *calls.
• Added a call in ResourceManagerImpl.java to delete the update entries from patch_host_ref table only if admin removes the associated host.
• Added new call createHostUpdateResponse in interface ResponseGenerator.java *and implemented it in *ApiResponseHelper.java .
• Added new files HostUpdatesDaoImpl.java and PatchHostRefDaoImpl.java into DefaultComponentLibrary.java .

New Agent APIs:

• hostUpdatesCommand.java
• hostUpdatesAnswer.java

Logging and Debugging

All logs will go to management-server.log

Current limitations

• Initial implementation will be there only for Xenserver hypervisor. Going forward, this feature can be made available for other hypervisors.

UI flow

This is the mockup UI, will modify it as per the suggestions.

Step 1: Navigate to the detailView page of a host, there you will find a new tab "Updates".

Step 2: Click on* "Updates"* tab to get a list of updates for this host.