Citrix Hypervisor 8.2
Citrix Hypervisor 8.2 has been available for about two weeks and Xen Orchestra is fully compatible with this new version of Citrix Hypervisor.
What's new?
The complete changelog for Citrix Hypervisor is available on this page.
This new version of Citrix Hypervisor 8.2 is a bit light regarding new features for a good reason: Citrix Hypervisor 8.2 is a release specifically oriented towards stability as it will be the new LTSR version for Citrix Hypervisor. The previous LTSR release, XenServer 7.1 LTSR, will still be supported for 3 years.
Consequently, the main improvements of this version are the following:
- Increased configuration limits (maximum host RAM and maximum number of logicial processors per host)
- Security improvements (server TLS certificates, TLS 1.2 protocol)
On the other hand, there are a few notable changes that can cause difficulties to some users:
- Disaggregation of the Citrix VM tools (now split in two differents sets, one for Windows, one for Linux).
Unfortunately, that means that the tools are not anymore available directly in Citrix Hypervisor and that you will need to download them from the Citrix website
- Support for Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 SP2, and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 has been removed
Which makes sense since Microsoft does not support it anymore
- Ivy Bridge CPUs support has been removed
Which also makes sense since Intel stopped the microcodes updates for this family
- The vSwitch Controller appliance has been removed
Note that if you are using Xen Orchestra, you can use our SDN controller feature as an alternative
XCP-ng status
We are currently working on the new version of XCP-ng: XCP-ng 8.2. Our goal is to release a first beta version this summer (August) and a Release Candidate should be ready in September. XCP-ng 8.2 definitive release should be for the end of September/early October.
More information about XCP-ng 8.2 will be available on XCP-ng blog very soon.
How to update CH 8.2 with Xen Orchestra
Citrix Hypervisor 8.2 is not a major update, which means that the upgrade from previous version should be easy.
⚠: The update process can take a while (up to 15min+ per host). DO NOT RESTART TOOLSTACK OR HOSTS DURING THE PROCESS.
- Download the ISO of the edition of Citrix Hypervisor you need from this page.
⚠ You will need to have a Citrix account to reach the download page.
- In Xen Orchestra, go to the home/pool view and select the pool you want to upgrade to CH 8.2
- Go into the "Advanced" tab and click on "Browse file" in the "Install supplemental pack on every host", then select the file you downloaded earlier:
- Now you only have to wait. See the "Monitor update process" section below to see what's happening on your host. While there is a update task in the "Task" view, DO NOT reboot or restart toolstack on your host!
When there is no pool_update.apply task left, you can reboot the hosts to have all updates validated. You can do it later, but it's recommended to do it ASAP.
