What You Need to Know About XenServer
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@olivier said
That's a way to do it also yes. In general, I've got always a physical machine (eg for backup) with enough space to do that. Doesn't require much bandwidth and power to simply share ISOs.
Yeah, just giving options.
There are many.
Anything that can share files would work. I just find sharing files anonymously through Windows maddening.
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@BRRABill said in What You Need to Know About XenServer:
@olivier said
That's a way to do it also yes. In general, I've got always a physical machine (eg for backup) with enough space to do that. Doesn't require much bandwidth and power to simply share ISOs.
Yeah, just giving options.
There are many.
Anything that can share files would work. I just find sharing files anonymously through Windows maddening.
I have no idea, last time I tried it was 10 years ago.
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@olivier said
I have no idea, last time I tried it was 10 years ago.
It's probably why you moved on!
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If I shared my SSD on my desktop how would I handle the permissions for mounting in XS? I did attempt this but it failed. Granted I had to leave immediately after and didnt get the chance to troubleshoot it.
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@wirestyle22 said in What You Need to Know About XenServer:
If I shared my SSD on my desktop how would I handle the permissions for mounting? I did attempt this but it failed. Granted I had to leave immediately after and didnt get the chance to troubleshoot it.
You could create a local account on your machine, give it access to the shared directory, and use that when you mount from XS.
That's what I did initially.
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@BRRABill said in What You Need to Know About XenServer:
@wirestyle22 said in What You Need to Know About XenServer:
If I shared my SSD on my desktop how would I handle the permissions for mounting? I did attempt this but it failed. Granted I had to leave immediately after and didnt get the chance to troubleshoot it.
You could create a local account on your machine, give it access to the shared directory, and use that when you mount from XS.
That's what I did initially.
I'll give this all a go when I get home and report back. Thanks everyone!
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Extremely easy install. Everything up and running. Reading/Testing more tonight. How are you guys determining the need for virtual/physical cores per server etc?
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@wirestyle22 said in What You Need to Know About XenServer:
Extremely easy install. Everything up and running. Reading/Testing more tonight. How are you guys determining the need for virtual/physical cores per server etc?
I think the general consensus is to start with one core and add more if performance sucks.
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@dafyre said in What You Need to Know About XenServer:
@wirestyle22 said in What You Need to Know About XenServer:
Extremely easy install. Everything up and running. Reading/Testing more tonight. How are you guys determining the need for virtual/physical cores per server etc?
I think the general consensus is to start with one core and add more if performance sucks.
Virtual?
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@wirestyle22 said in What You Need to Know About XenServer:
@dafyre said in What You Need to Know About XenServer:
@wirestyle22 said in What You Need to Know About XenServer:
Extremely easy install. Everything up and running. Reading/Testing more tonight. How are you guys determining the need for virtual/physical cores per server etc?
I think the general consensus is to start with one core and add more if performance sucks.
Virtual?
Always! You should have a reason to be physical otherwise virtual.
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@wirestyle22 Sorry, yeah.
Unless you're running a lot of heavily used VMs, a dual or quadcore CPU would be fine. My box at home runs a quad core cpu and has 5 or 6 VMs on it with no issues.
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@coliver said in What You Need to Know About XenServer:
@wirestyle22 said in What You Need to Know About XenServer:
@dafyre said in What You Need to Know About XenServer:
@wirestyle22 said in What You Need to Know About XenServer:
Extremely easy install. Everything up and running. Reading/Testing more tonight. How are you guys determining the need for virtual/physical cores per server etc?
I think the general consensus is to start with one core and add more if performance sucks.
Virtual?
Always! You should have a reason to be physical otherwise virtual.
Just for my own knowledge, what would be a good reason to go physical? Just for a point of reference.
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@wirestyle22 said in What You Need to Know About XenServer:
@coliver said in What You Need to Know About XenServer:
@wirestyle22 said in What You Need to Know About XenServer:
@dafyre said in What You Need to Know About XenServer:
@wirestyle22 said in What You Need to Know About XenServer:
Extremely easy install. Everything up and running. Reading/Testing more tonight. How are you guys determining the need for virtual/physical cores per server etc?
I think the general consensus is to start with one core and add more if performance sucks.
Virtual?
Always! You should have a reason to be physical otherwise virtual.
Just for my own knowledge, what would be a good reason to go physical? Just for a point of reference.
Again... General concensus around here is the only thing you need Physical for is to install the hypervisor. Everything should be virtual these days.
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@wirestyle22 said in What You Need to Know About XenServer:
@coliver said in What You Need to Know About XenServer:
@wirestyle22 said in What You Need to Know About XenServer:
@dafyre said in What You Need to Know About XenServer:
@wirestyle22 said in What You Need to Know About XenServer:
Extremely easy install. Everything up and running. Reading/Testing more tonight. How are you guys determining the need for virtual/physical cores per server etc?
I think the general consensus is to start with one core and add more if performance sucks.
Virtual?
Always! You should have a reason to be physical otherwise virtual.
Just for my own knowledge, what would be a good reason to go physical? Just for a point of reference.
Maybe NAS/SAN storage, where massive I/Os and scalability is needed (note that you can connect a massive SAN/NAS to a pool so...).
Also, even real-time operations could be done with an Hypervisor now (Xen is going at full speed in automotive industry, via XenRT and Xen ARM projects).
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@wirestyle22 said in What You Need to Know About XenServer:
@coliver said in What You Need to Know About XenServer:
@wirestyle22 said in What You Need to Know About XenServer:
@dafyre said in What You Need to Know About XenServer:
@wirestyle22 said in What You Need to Know About XenServer:
Extremely easy install. Everything up and running. Reading/Testing more tonight. How are you guys determining the need for virtual/physical cores per server etc?
I think the general consensus is to start with one core and add more if performance sucks.
Virtual?
Always! You should have a reason to be physical otherwise virtual.
Just for my own knowledge, what would be a good reason to go physical? Just for a point of reference.
If you have a reason to install physical you will know it. The reasons are so rare that you will most likely never run into one.
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@wirestyle22 said in What You Need to Know About XenServer:
Extremely easy install. Everything up and running. Reading/Testing more tonight. How are you guys determining the need for virtual/physical cores per server etc?
There is some nice performance monitoring built right into XC and XO. That's a good place to watch and see if anything (CPU, RAM, etc.) needs to be increased.
@scottalanmiller ... one more thing you might want to add to your initial writeup is to install the XenTools onto each VM for optimal performance monitoring and VM functionality
P.S. @wirestyle22 install the XenTools on your VMs if you haven't already. You'll find them on the ISO repository. Just inser the tools ISO and run it.
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I'm currently writing a complete guide/blog post on Xen tools.
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@DustinB3403 said in What You Need to Know About XenServer:
The reason being that LOCAL repo's aren't supported, is that it literally takes nothing to share out a drive from a windows desktop and connect to it via XenCenter (or XO).
It's a 5 minute process.
And why should I be required to have a separate piece of hardware just to hold ISO files for the various VM's I wish to mount?
I can use shared storage with Hyper-V (and I assume VMWare, never tried), but local storage is is always going to be faster.
You also do not modify the contents of the ISO repository often. You load up the various ISO files once and never touch it again unless you get a new shiny thing. At that point updating that repo is no different than updating said shared storage.
It is a huge oversight to not have the capability.
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@JaredBusch XenServer wasn't designed for home usage, but for companies which already have plenty of shares (NFS/SMB). It explains why it's not meant like this "in a easy way".
But it will work with a local ISO storage, it's just not really user friendly.
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@olivier said in What You Need to Know About XenServer:
I'm currently writing a complete guide/blog post on Xen tools.
I'm not being a smart ass, but what is there to guide?
Install ISO, run setup.
Am I missing something?
