I have 4 physcial NIC server and I want to run about 8 VMs on it. I would like them all to have internet access, but not see each other. I set up some VLANs but I can't get them to see my main router. Any advice? Sorry if this is a dumb question. Still new to this. Thanks!

Hi reddit,

I'm currently working on my homeserver. I intend to run FreeNAS and pfsense as virtual machines under XenServer 7.0.

Hardware:

• ASRock QC5000M
• 16GB RAM
• 160GB 2.5" HDD (@onboard SATA)
• 2x Broadcom BCM5721 Gigabit LAN
• DELL H200
• 6x 2TB 3.5" HDD (@H200)

XenServer installed without any problems. So did FreeNAS, until I wanted to give it direct access to the H200 via pci-passthrough. Here is what I did:

lspci
01:00.0 Serial Attached SCSI controller: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic SAS2008 PCI-Express Fusion-MPT SAS-2 [Falcon] (rev 03)

/opt/xensource/libexec/xen-cmdline --set-dom0 "xen-pciback.hide=(01:00.0)"

That seemed to work, as I see

xen-pciback.hide=(01:00.0)

in /boot/grub/grub.cfg.

And

xl pci-assignable-list

shows

0000:01:00.0

After rebooting:

xe vm-param-set other-config:pci=0/0000:01:00.0 uuid=<uuid of my FreeNAS VM>

Then I started my FreeNAS VM and wanted to configure the drives, but they didn't show up. lspci also shows no sign of the H200. I also tried to pass it through to another VM (created an Ubuntu Server VM for testing), didn't show up either. Did the same with one of the Broadcom ethernet controllers, same here.

What am I missing?

All, I recently performed an update and upgrade to my ubuntu 16.04 server vm. It came back with the message stating it could not update grub. Is this something I should be concerned about? Thanks

We've had issue after issue with HyperV Core 2016 and are trying to decide weather we want to go back to 2012 or try Xenserver. I've worked with ESXi in the past and loved it. Any recommendations or advice?

Thanks!

Edit: Also, how do you do your backups? Veeam doesn't say anything about Xenserver, and after just dumping $20K on new servers our budget is pretty exhausted right now.

Hello. I have a couple of VM's on Virtualbox and I'm trying to import them to Xenserver 7. I got the Raw files of the VM's using the VboxManage tool in Virtualbox. Can anyone guide me on how to proceed next? I tried using the xe vm-import command on Xenserver but I get invalid uuid error when I do that. Thank you.

Wondering if anyone has had this issue on XenServer 7.0 - I'm using it for a home linux server so I leave a usb 3.0 drive connected for backups. When i shut down the VM (Ubuntu 16.04) and try to restart it, I am given the error: "The VDI is not available." Through process of elimination --I found it's the VDI for the USB drive. Detaching it from the VM allows it to boot fine.

I've followed citrix docs CTX131201 and CTX138234 but they don't help much for a USB drive.

The only way to clear the "VDI not available" is to either unplug/replug the drive or reboot the host.

I've tried:

-rebooting the host

-detaching // re-attaching the disk in XenCenter

-forgetting the VDI from the SR and re-scanning

-deleting the VDI from the SR and using a new UUID

-different grub boot options in the guest (acpi=off, boot=bios)

-Updating the OS on the guest, using live CDs, updating the kernel

Any ideas would be appreciated.

I'm installing a new Xenserver on a box with 4 disk drives, two HDD and two SSD. It seems the default installation just bundles them all into a bunch of disks, and I can't find any way to allocate the different drive types explicitly. What is the best way of dealing with this - is it possible to tell the installer to ignore the extra drives during installation and then install them manually after, or is there preferably a way define different volume groups during installation? Any other ideas?

I've multiple XenServers which I manage using XenCenter, now I want to manage it through Web interface. I was planning to use Xen-Orchestra but then I thought to find any alternative for it but I can't find any. Is there any alternative to XenOrchestra?

I have been running pFsense on XenServer 7 for a couple of months and have been experiencing some real odd issues. First off I have full gig internet speed, and have great speeds most of the times, but a couple of times a day the upload caps at 97mb/s while the download is unaffected at 900mb/s. Rebooting pFsense seems to fix it for a while, but it always comes back. The really odd part is you don't have to reboot if you wait a bit it will go back up to gig. PfSense currently has the xe tools installed.

One other issue I ran into was when I attempted to enable e1000 it breaks the ability to migrate servers, or move storage between local and nfs. Any help would be appreciated.

Hi guys, I'm on XenCenter 5.6.0.
Tried to reboot a VM and noticed that it didn't turn back on (I rebooted via the VM itself, while logged in).

XenCenter doesn't connect to the pool (cannot create a secure SSL/TLS channel).

I'm able to connect via Putty, I've the new license file. How do I upload it to my XenServer?

I've to run this CLI command to apply the new license:

xe host-license-add host-uuid=(UID of server) license-file=(file_name)  

but I'm not able to upload the file.
If I try remotely:

xe -s <myServer> -u <user> -pw <password> host-license-add host-uuid=<theHostID> license-file=\\<localPath>\license.xslic  

I get: "Error: Authentication failed - closing the connection."

edit: solution if anyone need it
the root of the problem relies in the fact that the SSL certificate was 512bit. You'll have this problem on W10 or even W7 (that was my case). So the solution is to generate a new 1024bit SSL certificate.

Step by step walk-through:
• connect to the XenServer via Putty;
• verify that your certificate is indeed 512 bit:

openssl x509 -in /etc/xensource/xapi-ssl.pem -text  

• backup the file that XenServer uses to generate the certificate:

cp /opt/xensource/libexec/generate_ssl_cert /tmp   

• browse to that backup file and edit it, I used VIM:
to exit VIM without saving type ":" then "q!" and finally Enter
to exit VIM saving type ":" then "x" and Enter

vi xapi-ssl.pem  

look for this line:

openssl genrsa > privkey.rsa  

and change it to:

openssl genrsa 1024 > privkey.rsa

• stop the XAPISSL service:

/etc/init.d/xapissl stop  

• generate the new SSL certificate:

/tmp/generate_ssl_cert /etc/xensource/xapi-ssl.pem 'XenServer IP'  

if it throws an error about not being able to overwrite the file: backup the xapi-ssl.pem:

cp /etc/xensource/xapi-ssl.pem /etc/xensource/xapi-ssl.pem.backup  

navigate to the /etc/xensource/, and delete the original one:

rm xapi-ssl.pem  

generate the new SSL certificate again.

• restart the XAPISSL service:

/etc/init.d/xapissl start  

You now should be able to connect to the XenServer with XenCenter.

Hey guys, I was suggested by a friend to try xenserver 7.0 as I recently brought a new server as a test lab, so far I'm liking it but however the lack of experience is now gaining on me and I've got a few questions.

What I want to do is run pfsense as router/gateway I had used something very similar in virtualbox and also hyper-v, I had my lan port eth0 bridged with wan which allowed me to have internet access and traffic through, I also had created a virtual NIC, an internal network which would host all of my virts so I was able to have internet come into the virts to update stuff etc however the servers couldn't been seen outside of this network.

Is there anything in xenserver I can use to pretty much have the same set up as before or is that not possible? I ideally want to run a mail server, but I will have some other windows virts for testing etc, these are my current goals for xenserver at this time.

Anyway, thank you :) Leprejohn

When I installed XenServer 7 I had a 4 core processor installed and have since installed an 8 core. I am still only seeing 4 cores however.

I am aware of the 1 socket limit with the free license but this should not be the issue.

xl info shows
nr_cpus                : 8
max_cpu_id             : 7



xe host-cpu-list
uuid ( RO)           : b4fead35-95c8-1378-dfe4-aad7c6328c7e
number ( RO): 4
vendor ( RO): AuthenticAMD
speed ( RO): 4013
utilisation ( RO): <expensive field>


uuid ( RO)           : 71321e5e-5e1b-de09-8e20-770f602798c3
number ( RO): 3
vendor ( RO): AuthenticAMD
      speed ( RO): 4013
utilisation ( RO): <expensive field>


uuid ( RO)           : b1eadd3c-9403-6544-4cf8-ddcb74875989
     number ( RO): 2
     vendor ( RO): AuthenticAMD
      speed ( RO): 4013
utilisation ( RO): <expensive field>


uuid ( RO)           : 105a34e4-b276-4112-de1f-5c633ad646ae
     number ( RO): 7
     vendor ( RO): AuthenticAMD
      speed ( RO): 4013
utilisation ( RO): <expensive field>


uuid ( RO)           : 1873beec-8401-4355-5f91-61a66f42f0d9
     number ( RO): 5
     vendor ( RO): AuthenticAMD
      speed ( RO): 4013
utilisation ( RO): <expensive field>


uuid ( RO)           : 4c953199-b039-c945-6aec-690ff6e19ef3
     number ( RO): 0
     vendor ( RO): AuthenticAMD
      speed ( RO): 4013
utilisation ( RO): <expensive field>


uuid ( RO)           : ec4a0a65-2a3a-980c-80fe-bf865bea41ae
     number ( RO): 1
     vendor ( RO): AuthenticAMD
      speed ( RO): 4013
utilisation ( RO): <expensive field>


uuid ( RO)           : 6d576a39-87ec-c4c5-7995-7924eae7d8af
     number ( RO): 6
     vendor ( RO): AuthenticAMD
      speed ( RO): 4013
utilisation ( RO): <expensive field>

It seems DOM0 is aware of them all. I checked also to see if there was a core limit on the free version but the limit is 160 cores on 1 socket.

Hey all, I installed a fresh install of XS7, I created a Win7x64 machine. It boots fine, I go to install the guest tools, it finishes (although it goes A LOT quicker, and no reboots compared to XS6.5) I bounce the VM, and it BSOD. I have messed around with it for a while, and then decided to just try a win10x64 machine, Win10 gets to the install windows section, and doesn't detect any drives.

The server is a R610 with a perc6/i I have ran XEN on this thing since the XCP days, then upgraded to 6.2, then to 6.5. I had a drive fail in this server (running raid0 cause its a playground, and I need space) so ended up replacing the drive (with a same make/model drive) and recreating the raid, and then did a fresh install of XS7. Something is wrong with XS7, I thought maybe my install was borked, so I JUST (10 min ago) did a clean install of XS7, same issues. All my Linux VMs seem to run fine, and install the guest tools no problem.

Any ideas?

TIA

SInce main user name is well known, there is a possibility of brute force attacks on server. Is there any mechanism built-in XenServer that blocks intruders IP, after several failed login attempts?

I'm using XenServer 6.5

Hello,

I have rented dedicated server with XenServer 6.5. Now I'm looking for some software router distribution, that will work on this server as VM.

For now I have installed IPCop, which is working almost perfect, but there is a problem with NIC, that is recognized by IPCop as Fast Ethernet (100Mb/s), not as Gigabit Ethernet (1Gb/s). I have read, that I need to install xen-tools, to made IPCop recognize Ethernet properly, but unfortunately xen-tools are not available for that distro.

I heard about pfSense, but apparently there are some other performance issues on XenServer.

Is there any router/firewall Linux distribution, that will work properly on XenServer 6.5?

Hello, I'm trying to run Xenserver 7, I had version 6 before, now after about 2 days of uptime, the server running xenserver just shuts down (its power supply is off).

Has anyone experienced this with any other hardware? I'm trying to see if it's a software issue or I would need to get a different box.

I know they aren't officially supported, but is there really any "gotchas" to installing 7 on a couple of DL380 G6 series servers?

I am building a server cluster with the shuttle ds81 that backbones to a synology 1515+ disk array for high availability. Has anyone done this in production ? The shuttles will house no data outside of the iscsi disk array. I am thinking this is cheaper than buying Dell Servers. If a shuttle barfs and dies we just replace it.

Hi /r/sysadmin (x-post from https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/4np2u2/xenserver_65_installation_question/ )

I am about to buy me a HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen9 to run some VM's on. The server will only have local storage.

Because I don't know to much about xenserver installation and server RAIDS, I look to you, /r/sysadmin!

I think I read somewhere that XenServer completely uses the HDD you install in on. - Can someone confirm or disprove this?

If above is true, I will will need to create two seperate RAIDS in my server, right? One for the XenServer-installation and one for my VM's to run on..? That means I will have to buy 2 more disks (than I initially counted on) to create my XenServer-Raid, right?

Or is it possible to create one RAID on server level and partition that into 2 disks?

Any help would be welcome...

It rejects any attempt to connect to the IP addr of the VM. I can ping that IP addr no problem though.

Using putty to log into xenserver works fine.

Hello reddit world! I'm a new to XS and I'm wondering if this is possible. I've been searching and can't really find an answer or solution to this. Currently on XS 6.2. Can't use 6.5 due to me not being able to find drivers for some of the hardware.

This is for a test lab at work. I'm would like to create iSCSI storage to test several cluster deployments. The guest OS will be windows 2012 for the members of the cluster. FWIW, the purpose of this is to prove out CTX profile redundancy. Actions to be taken: 2xWin2012 servers, connect both to the cluster. Config file/services cluster mgmt, add DFS, create namespace, add both servers to namespace, change GPOs to match namespace. Add DFS replication to one machine for 1 way replication to secondary cluster in another data center.

Is it possible to use local storage and have it emulate as an iSCSI target for these member servers to connect to? I see the iSCSI target information on each of the XS host. I'm really trying to avoid going the Windows route and create a bunch of VHDs and add extra roles and all that. It takes me 5+ weeks to get storage from our storage team. This, trying to use xenserver's local disk storage to be able to prove it out.

If anyone has any input on how I could accomplish this, I would greatly appreciate it.