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

Managing bonds


You wish to ensure that any critical server has high availability access to the network.

This is a highly desirable requirement in a virtual environment. XenServer lets you achieve high network availability and create redundancy through NIC bonding, also known as NIC teaming.

Using NIC bonding, an administrator configures two physical network interfaces together so they logically function as one network card. If one NIC in the bond fails, the host's network traffic is automatically redirected through the second NIC.

XenServer supports up to eight bonded networks—you can bond network interfaces related to management and virtual machine traffic.

Bonding behavior differs depending on whether it is being configured for management interfaces (primary or dedicated to storage) or for virtual machine interfaces. When you create a bond for management interfaces, the second NIC provides only failover for the management traffic, when you create a bond dedicated to a virtual machine's traffic...