Book Image

Citrix XenServer 6.0 Administration Essential Guide

By : Daniele Tosatto
Book Image

Citrix XenServer 6.0 Administration Essential Guide

By: Daniele Tosatto

Overview of this book

Virtualization helps an organization reduce costs and achieve low maintenance. It is fast becoming an important skill for all administrators. Citrix's XenServer is one of the leading virtualization solutions for enterprises and helps companies reduce costs while allowing them to integrate, automate and easily manage their datacenters. It comes with a steep learning curve, but the results are well worth the effort. This practical guide on XenServer administration shows you how to manage XenServer pools; create, configure and manage virtual machines and a datacenter. With the help of real-world examples in this book, you will be able to apply these concepts directly in your everyday life. Packed with author's tips and helpful advice; the book is your best choice for anything related to XenServer administration. This is the only book that focuses on the most vital aspect of XenServerñadministration. You don't have to struggle through the lesser-documented tasks anymore, this book will provide all the information you need to create and run a perfectly designed datacenter using XenServer.You will begin your journey towards becoming an expert XenServer administrator by configuring XenServer pools and managing role-based user authentication. Your next step is to create and manage virtual machines. In the following chapters you will learn to configure storage. The book discusses some of the more difficult tasks like configuring and managing VM memory. In the end you will be capable of handling your datacenter and virtual machines through a network, and you will learn how to monitor and backup your XenServer setup. All through the book, the author adds his helpful tips and advice that will help you choose the best options for your setup.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Citrix XenServer 6.0 Administration Essential Guide
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Preparing a XenServer host for maintenance


You may need to take a managed server offline for a number of reasons, such as a rolling upgrade of virtualization software, adding or testing connectivity to a new network, diagnosing an underlying hardware issue, or adding connectivity to a new storage system. In XenCenter, you can take a server offline temporarily by placing it into Maintenance Mode.

If the server is in a resource pool, when you place it into Maintenance Mode, all running VMs will be automatically migrated from it to another server in the same pool. If the server is the pool master, a new master will also be selected for the pool.

While a server is in Maintenance Mode you cannot create or start any VMs on it.

When all running VMs have been successfully migrated off the server, the server's status is changed to and set to Disabled.

To take a server out of Maintenance Mode, select the server and then click on Exit Maintenance Mode in the shortcut menu, as shown in the following screenshot:

To prepare a XenServer host in a pool for maintenance operations using the CLI use the following procedure:

  1. Open a console on any host of the pool.

  2. Identify the UUID of the host you want to place in Maintenance Mode:

    xe host-list
    
  3. Execute the following commands to start the removal process:

    xe host-disable uuid=<host_uuid>
    xe host-evacuate uuid=<host_uuid>
    

    where the host-uuid parameter is the value you have found in the previous step.

    This will disable the XenServer host and then migrate any running VMs to other XenServer hosts in the pool.

  4. Once the maintenance operation is completed, enable the XenServer host by executing the following command:

    xe host-enable