Today I had to add two 500Gb SATAu hard drive to my XenServer. Plug this two hot plug drive in this Dell 2950 III was the easy part, configure the new RAID1 in the Perc 6i controller wasn’t so easy… This bios is very annoying and after 2 hours we found the good menu and where to create the new volume…

Once this step done, and after 16Gb of memory more, XenServer started without any problem, the drive wasn’t available through the XenCenter so I though I had to mount it or something like that.

So here comes the few steps to add a local storage to your XenServer 5.5 :

Type : fdisk -l

you’ll see the list of all volumes and hard drives, then :

Type : pvcreate /dev/sdb

sdb is my new volume

and then to configure it as a local storage :

Type : xe sr-create type=lvm content-type=user device-config:device=/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_ST3320620AS_5QF7QZZL name-label=”LOCAL SR”

scsi-SATA_ST3320620AS_5QF7QZZL is the name of my volume, you’ll have to change this value with your own, and name-label is the name you want to give to your local storage.

and this is it !

Remark : If your XenServer is a pool, you need to put it off, follow above steps and put back the XenServer in your pool.

Here it is ! Full of promizes, and full of new options we are all waiting for. Let me tell you first, this is BETA release from Citrix, so don’t complain to me or to Citrix if you crash your production servers, you have to run test and wait for the final new release.

You can access the whole stuff from your MyCitrix account in Tech/Beta preview of XenServer. You have to download the two isos files, the proper license file and XenCenter (there is a new 5.5 version).

To perfom this update just boot on the CD you just download and follow the instruction on the screen, this is what I did in the next video :

(Please open the article to see the flash file or player.)

Once it’s done, just reboot and you did it !

Now let’s me show you some of the new things I saw, I will come back later on it with a full report, it’s sunday and I’m suppose to stop to geeking around during the week end

Edit : later in the afternoon…

First issue : The network didn’t work at all on the new XenServer 5.5 Beta 1. I wasn’t able to ping it and wasn’t able to ping from it. Weird behave, it looks like the system doesn’t have the parameters showing in the console recorded in the network configuration file. First try was the good, just reconfigure the network management card with the same parameters as before, so the configuration will be record again in the filesystem.
BUT I DIDN’T LAST….
I had to browse a bit Citrix’s support to find out I had to edit a file :

/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 and add : ETHTOOL_OPTS=”speed 100 duplex full”

I think it finaly did the trick… I will wait for tomorow to tell you it was good.

They key to use are simple, forget your mouse, and use Tab, Space, Arrows and Enter.

Edit 17 April 2009 : I’ve add the “normal” installation, and if you want to try to install Citrix XenServer 5 on a VMWare, you have to configure the CPU emulation this way :

Click on continue reading to watch the video

(Please open the article to see the flash file or player.)

Nous sommes heureux de vous inviter le 13 Juin 2009 à la première JTDC (Journée Technique Doctor-Citrix). Cette journée se veut entre un Pubforum et un KTE Citrix, Autant dire que se sera une journée très IT, pour les IT par des IT.

Les inscriptions sont libre, gratuite et non réservé au membres du forum, il vous suffit de remplir ce formulaire. Cette rencontre se passera en région parisienne, pour le moment la ville de Noisy le grand (siège de la soc Chavers) est retenu. Le nombre de place de cette salle étant limité à 25 personnes, il est possible que ce lieu change (Paris & Petite couronne). C’est pourquoi l’emplacement exacte ne sera donnée qu’a la fin des inscriptions le 23 Mai. Le cocktail⁽¹⁾ sera simple: 50% de XA⁽²⁾, 20% de XS⁽²⁾ et 10% de XD⁽²⁾.

Menu⁽³⁾:

1. 10h00 Accueil, petit café.
2. 10h20 Introduction et présentation des orateurs.
3. 10h30 Rappel du fonctionnement CPS/XA (DS, DC, IMA…)
4. 11h15 Impressions, best practice, truc & astuces par ThinIsFat (doctor-citrix).
5. 12h30 Buffet gratuit.
6. 13h30 Outils Citrix (dsmaint, dscheck) par Pierre Marmignon (citrixtools.net)
7. 14h30 XenSever, fonctionnement, truc & astuces par Chavers (doctor-citrix).
8. 16h00 Pause.
9. 16h30 XenDesktop / VDI par Vincent Branger (infralys.com)
10. 17h30 Tours de table avec les participants.

Cette journée sera filmé par Patrice  Jacques-Gustave (tescitrixoupas.net) et mis en ligne sur citrixtools.net.

⁽¹⁾Pas d’alcool que du Citrix. ⁽²⁾XA : XenApp XS: XenServer XD: XenDesktop. ⁽³⁾Comme pour le lieu, le niveau des presentations sera en fonction de l’auditoire.

If you’re reading this, you already know the news: XenServer, our enterprise virtual infrastructure platform is now free (including resource pooling and live relo), and we have announced Citrix Essentials for XenServer, and Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V as our virtualization management portfolio that offers a rich set of automated functions that drive the compatible virtualization layers beneath – the free Hyper-V hypervisor from Microsoft, and the free XenServer Enterprise virtual infrastructure platform from Citrix.  Finally, and most importanly, we announced a powerful go-to-market roadmap with Microsoft.

Response to our announcements has been extremely positive, from our partner Microsoft to our channel partners and resellers, and many many customers and users.  There are the expected nay-sayers too, but someone had to drink the only thing that you get free from our competitor – VMware koolaid.

more on http://community.citrix.com/blogs/citrite/simoncr/2009/02/23/Free%2C+as+in+Virtual+Infrastructure