XenServer VM continuous replication What about having a continuous replication system for your XenServer VMs without any storage vendor lock-in? We just did it in Xen Orchestra [https://xen-orchestra.com/#!/?pk_campaign=blog_continuous_replication]. You can now replicate a VM every xx minutes/hours on a any storage repository. It could be on
Continuous Delta Backup Less than one month after our first release of XenServer incremental backup [/blog/xenserver-incremental-backup/], we made a major improvement inside Xen Orchestra [https://xen-orchestra.com/#!/?pk_campaign=blog_continuous_backup]: Continuous Delta Backup. And we are very happy to present you this exclusive feature on XenServer! It means to backup
Create multiple VMs at once Do you ever wanted to create multiple XenServer VMs at once? Until now, you needed to repeat the operation as often as necessary. Boring when you need to create 10 or even 100 VMs! What about now? We added an option inside Xen Orchestra [https://xen-orchestra.com/#!/?pk_campaign=blog_
Create VMs ready in less than 30 sec By ready, we mean: * from the click on "Create VM" * to a SSH access on a 100% working system And also from a generic template: which we can select the disk size dynamically and RAM/CPU. How can it be possible? Using CloudInit! You can find working templates
Debian cloud template for XenServer TL;DR: a working and validated Debian 8 (Jessie) template is available here [https://cloud.vates.fr/index.php/s/jynIvCjhso47nR8/download] if you want. The story continue, after implementing the XenServer Cloud Init support [https://xen-orchestra.com/blog/cloudinit-support-for-xenserver/] in Xen Orchestra [https://xen-orchestra.com/#!/?pk_campaign=blog_cloud_
Xen Orchestra 4.11 Last release of the year! This 4.11 is among the biggest releases ever (45 issues/enhancements closed!) Some features of this version: * Delta backup * CloudInit support * Improved filtered search * XMPP alert plugin * VDI resizing and moving (working on any XenServer version!) * better XenServer 6.1/6.2 support The
Backup XenServer incremental backup Incremental backup is now possible with XenServer and Xen Orchestra.
CentOS cloud template for XenServer TL;DR: a working template is available here [https://cloud.vates.fr/index.php/s/NoUNeaP24wf33Bn/download] if you want. After implementing the XenServer Cloud Init support [https://xen-orchestra.com/blog/cloudinit-support-for-xenserver/] in Xen Orchestra [https://xen-orchestra.com/#!/?pk_campaign=blog_cloud_centos], let's see now how to
CloudInit support for XenServer We are proud to announce that you can now use the CloudInit system with XenServer, without any plugin to install on your hosts. Only by using Xen Orchestra [https://xen-orchestra.com/#!/?pk_campaign=blog_cloud_support]. Let's see what it can do for you and how to use
Moving a VDI offline in XenServer As you may know in XenServer, you can move a VDI -from a running VM- to another SR (Storage Repository). We exposed this feature almost 1 year ago in our article explaining how to move a VDI in live [blog/moving-vdi-in-live/]. But what about a VDI on a halted VM?
Set the XenServer default SR 💡This guide is 100% compatible with XCP-ng. In XenServer, the default SR (Storage Repository) is where your VDIs are stored by default. It's very useful for a lot of things, avoiding the user to configure itself for each operation. With Xen Orchestra Just go inside your pool view,
Recover or reinstall your XenServer PV VMs This blog post will explain how to deal with your existing PV guests, when they can't boot anymore. The problem Typically, when you failed your installation of a PV guest, you got: The bootloader for this VM returned an error -- did the VM installation succeed? Error from
Improved search for your XenServer infrastructure Here is some news about a nice improvement coming in the next version of Xen Orchestra: an improved search bar. Our previous search system worked for filtering in live VM/host/SR/pool name, IP address, tags and whatever inside those objects. But what about advanced requests? We wanted to
XMPP notifications for XenServer backups Since last release [/blog/xen-orchestra-4-10/], we added email notifications for all backup events (full backup [https://xen-orchestra.com/docs/full_backups.html], rolling snapshots [https://xen-orchestra.com/docs/rolling_snapshots.html] or even DR [https://xen-orchestra.com/docs/delta_backups.html]): Not fun enough? So go for XMPP notification then!
Xen Orchestra 4.10 Last release of the month! This one is pretty big: * 30+ issues/enhancements closed * 10 new usable features * a lot of improvements * and multiple bug fixes! In few words: we finished the first batch of backup features, and we included a lot of things you'll love :) The official
Auto start VM on XenServer boot This article explains how to start automatically a VM when you boot or reboot your XenServer host. Indeed, if for a reason you need to restart your host (or if it reboots for any "non-planned" reason), it's a good thing to have your VM started automatically.
Docker Docker support in XenServer, the ultimate guide Docker guide to have your container exposed in XenServer.
XenServer emergency shutdown Imagine you lost electrical power for your whole IT room. Luckily, you got an UPS[1], and that's great. But what if power doesn't come back before the batteries are depleted? You have a limited amount of time to shutdown your XenServer hosts, and you probably
XenServer quiesce snapshots Snapshots are a convenient way to rollback your system to a previous state, in other words to "point in time" a disk state. They are: * fast * small (delta) * exportable * and can be scheduled with retention [https://xen-orchestra.com/blog/xen-orchestra-4-2/#schedulerollingsnapshots] in Xen Orchestra [https://xen-orchestra.com/#!/?pk_
Release Xen Orchestra 4.9 First release of November! You wanted more backup options? You got it! Please also consider to check our new documentation [https://xen-orchestra.com/docs/]. Auto Disaster Recovery This feature is possible thanks to our VM streaming implementation we built few days ago [https://xen-orchestra.com/blog/vm-streaming-export-in-xenserver/]: It works like
Xen Orchestra documentation Our new complete documentation is now available here: https://xen-orchestra.com/docs/ Feel free to comment if we missed something! Roughly, it's more than 70 pages exported in a PDF.
XenServer backup: compress or not compress? When you export a VM (eg for backup purpose) in XenServer, you can use (or not) the built-in compression of the XAPI. In the coming 4.9 version of Xen Orchestra, you can select "Disable compression" for your XenServer scheduled backups: Let's try to compare a
Announcing Xen Orchestra 5.x Just after our initial release of Xen Orchestra 4.8 [/blog/xen-orchestra-4-8/], I'm proud to announce that we started to work for a new major release: Xen Orcestra 5.0, the web interface for XenServer. This first milestone of our new 5.x branch will be awesome, believe
VM streaming export in XenServer Have you ever wanted to copy a VM to another pool or host? So far, you have to do this: 1. export the VM somewhere (on a storage large enough to handle the whole VM size) 2. import the VM on a new host And not only this, you need
Bug hunt with Citrix This is the (short) story of how we discovered a bug using Xen Orchestra and XenServer [https://xen-orchestra.com/#!/xenserver], then how it was fixed very quickly by Citrix team. > This is me telling calmly but firmly that we found a noticeable bug. Symptoms In short: losing consoles in
