Exercise - Running everRunVM on XenServer Free Edition - Running... · Exercise - Running everRun VM on XenServer free edition Created: Author Date Arvid Kuipers – Raxco Software

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Document

Name:

Exercise - Running everRun VM on XenServer free edition

Created:

Author Date

Arvid Kuipers – Raxco Software Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Revisions:

Author Date

This Exercise is meant to explore everRun-appliance as running on the free XenServer edition, mainly in regard to protection-levels and shared-storage-availability.

Installation and administration of XenServer Virtual Machines and everRun VM is not being discussed

in detail (as this not being the main purpose of this exercise). Please refer to the appropriate

Xenserver- and everRunVM-documentation instead, in order to obtain detailed information regarding installation and administration of these products.

Version details

XenServer build date: 2009-04-15

XenServer build number: 13192x XenServer version: 5.0.0 XenServer hotfixes applied: Hotfix 1 for XenServer 5.0.0

Hotfix 2 for XenServer 5.0.0

Hotfix 3 for XenServer 5.0.0

everRun version: 5.0.0.9321-RL-EA




Some background-information

everRun VM is tested and approved for the free edition of Citrix XenServer.

Some things to take in consideration however, could be: • The Free XenServer won’t give you level 1 protection (being referred to as “XenServer HA”)

• Currently the Free license is valid for a year. After that period, a new license would have to be

applied. • After having applied the free license, XenCenter gave me a reminder, summarizing some

features available in Citrix Essentials for XenServer, in addition to the features embedded in

the free edition

More info can be found at the article below:

http://www.citrix.com/English/ps2/products/feature.asp?contentID=1686939




Start exercise

After installing XenServer Free Edition, add the Xen Hosts in XenCenter. In result, the licence-manager

will pop-up.

In the Licence-manager, select both hosts and click [Activate]




This will open a registration browser-window. Complete this form with the appropriate information

After completion, the license-file is being send to the email-address you provided in the form above




As such..




License the 2 hosts as normal, using the acquired license-file




Make note of the license-details on each host on the general tab.




Next, create the XenServer pool (“pool1” in the example above)




Do you make use of shared-storage (optional) ? Then assign the appropriate management-interfaces (as illustrated above). Be sure to assign the correct network here, i.e. bear in mind that Network0 is

reserved for Management, while Network1 and 2 are reserved for the availability-links.




..and make a connection to your storage (the example above considers a connection-definition to an iSCSI SAN)




As such..




Now create your VM’s as normal (don’t forget to install XenServer tools)




The example below shows 5 VM’s running on host “smxenh1”, 1 VM running on host “smxenh2” and one not-running VM residing on the iSCSI SAN (again, Shared-Storage-usage is optional for everRun

VM; besides the “tstw2k3-6 32bit” VM in the example below, all other VM’s are running on local

storage).

After having created a bunch of VM’s (as above) install everRun VM on both XenServer hosts and apply your everRun VM license.




Now start protecting your VM’s as normal.

Make note of the available protection-levels, i.e. level 1 is not selectable for the XenServer HA feature

is not enabled (as this is not included in the free edition of XenServer).




Also make note of the available storage-recources, i.e. besides local storage, shared storage on the iSCSI SAN (in this case) does seem to be a perfectly valid option.




After protection, start-up and synchronizing the above PVM and data, notice the shared storage being included in the storage-mirror-set (as requested in the previous step above)




As well, choosing “Storage Subsystem” as Data Protection Type (having a single storage-instance reside on a supposedly redundant Shared Storage) is recognized and accepted.




After protection, start-up and synchronizing the above PVM and data, notice the shared storage being assigned as storage-subsystem (as requested in the previous step above)




And continue the protection of VM’s as such…

Conclusion

In regard to running everRun VM on the free edition of XenServer, this exercise shows the following:

- Shared Storage availability - Apart from physical boundaries, we didn’t encounter any limitations regarding some maximum

number of VM’s or PVM’s in the pool

- Level2 and Level3 protection-level availability - Level1 (XenServer HA) protection-level unavailability

- Ease of management and administration

Documents

Exercise - Running everRunVM on XenServer Free Edition - Running... · Exercise - Running everRun VM on XenServer free edition Created: Author Date Arvid Kuipers – Raxco Software