Difference between revisions of "GSP Virtualisation with Xen"
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| − | The Grid Server Park machines (general services used for Nikhef and BiG Grid) is run with a centrally managed and controlled virtualisation environment. After the testing and evaluation period the Open Source ''Xen Cloud Platform'' (XCP, version 1.5beta) was chosen to run this infrastructure. The aim is to bring all systems under XCP control, managed in a set of four clusters: GSP "Piet", Nikhef's own "NDPF BL0", the EUGridPMA and Security cluster "SEC", and the test/verification cluster using the older Generics 2008A systems, "GEN". | + | The Grid Server Park machines (general services used for Nikhef and BiG Grid) is run with a centrally managed and controlled virtualisation environment. After the testing and evaluation period the Open Source ''Xen Cloud Platform'' (XCP, version 1.5beta, now: 1.6 final) was chosen to run this infrastructure. The aim is to bring all systems under XCP control, managed in a set of four clusters: GSP "Piet", Nikhef's own "NDPF BL0", the EUGridPMA and Security cluster "SEC", and the test/verification cluster using the older Generics 2008A systems, "GEN". |
= General information = | = General information = | ||
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* http://wiki.xen.org/xenwiki/XCP/XenServer_Feature_Matrix | * http://wiki.xen.org/xenwiki/XCP/XenServer_Feature_Matrix | ||
* http://xen.org/download/xcp/index_1.5.0.html | * http://xen.org/download/xcp/index_1.5.0.html | ||
| + | * http://downloads.xen.org/XCP/61809c/ (for XCP1.6) | ||
= Hardware = | = Hardware = | ||
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| Security || 2 systems || PE2950: 8 cores, 24 GiB, 4x500GB 7k2 SATA, dual 1GbE || vms-sec-*.inst.ipmi.nikhef.nl || vms-sec-01 | | Security || 2 systems || PE2950: 8 cores, 24 GiB, 4x500GB 7k2 SATA, dual 1GbE || vms-sec-*.inst.ipmi.nikhef.nl || vms-sec-01 | ||
|} | |} | ||
| + | |||
| + | = Upgrade notes XCP1.6 = | ||
| + | |||
| + | The move to XCP 1.6 has eased a lot of things. For one, you can now live-migrate VDIs between the local storage SRs of the VM hosts, XenCenter works without the version hack. Also good: upgrading from 1.5 works OK, and can be done through PXE and the XCP XML configuration file. | ||
| + | |||
| + | A few hints: | ||
| + | * Get the latest XenCenter 6.1 (download the XenServer 6.1 install CD ISO and extract the [http://stal.nikhef.nl/mirror/XenServer/XenServer6.1.0/client_install/XenCenter.msi XenCenter.MSI] from it or the XE CLI) | ||
| + | * ALWAYS upgrade the master first, WITHOUT putting it in maintenance mode | ||
| + | * Use | ||
| + | |||
| + | The following is no longer needed: | ||
| + | * NO need to change the version number of xapi | ||
| + | * NO need to apply the security fix (obviously) | ||
= Networking = | = Networking = | ||
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Then connect to the server in XenCenter, and in the Properties enable multipathing (for server that can do DM). If necessary, attach the iSCSI network to managent over vlan 16 (using the "iSCSI (over management)" network defined for the pool as a secondary management network). | Then connect to the server in XenCenter, and in the Properties enable multipathing (for server that can do DM). If necessary, attach the iSCSI network to managent over vlan 16 (using the "iSCSI (over management)" network defined for the pool as a secondary management network). | ||
| − | == Applying critical patches to XCP == | + | == Applying critical patches to XCP (1.5beta only) == |
Some key patches neeed to be applied to new server installations, in particular for CVS-2012-0217. For these no updated XCP packages are available (yet), but fortunately the patches publicly published for XenServer 6.0 ('''not''' 6.0.2) fit perfectly into a XCP1.5 (1.4.90) configuration, updating xapi-core to release 0.2-3299 (from xapi-core-0.2-3293.i686.rpm). The actual xapi-core RPM can easily be extracted from the xsupdate file at [http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX133165 http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX133165]. To apply this patch to a host, the script "apply.sh" to get to XS60E013 is available inside Nikhef at http://stal.nikhef.nl/mirror/XenServer/XCP15/patch-XS60E013/. download to the newly installed node and execute apply.sh: | Some key patches neeed to be applied to new server installations, in particular for CVS-2012-0217. For these no updated XCP packages are available (yet), but fortunately the patches publicly published for XenServer 6.0 ('''not''' 6.0.2) fit perfectly into a XCP1.5 (1.4.90) configuration, updating xapi-core to release 0.2-3299 (from xapi-core-0.2-3293.i686.rpm). The actual xapi-core RPM can easily be extracted from the xsupdate file at [http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX133165 http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX133165]. To apply this patch to a host, the script "apply.sh" to get to XS60E013 is available inside Nikhef at http://stal.nikhef.nl/mirror/XenServer/XCP15/patch-XS60E013/. download to the newly installed node and execute apply.sh: | ||
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In order to ensure consistency for live migraton, please make sure that all hosts in the pool have ''the same network configuration', and that all data networks are offered to all hosts! | In order to ensure consistency for live migraton, please make sure that all hosts in the pool have ''the same network configuration', and that all data networks are offered to all hosts! | ||
| − | == Faking XenServer 6.0 for XenCenter Management == | + | == Faking XenServer 6.0 for XenCenter Management (1.5beta only) == |
By default, the XCP hypervisor will present itself as a very-old-XenServer (v1) instance, and XenCenter will refure to do some of the more advanced features like dynamic memory, snapshots, and live migration. This can be fixed by manually 'editing' the XenServer version string in the xapi program, as describe don the Xen wiki. After '''each new installation and upgrade''' of the xapi binary: | By default, the XCP hypervisor will present itself as a very-old-XenServer (v1) instance, and XenCenter will refure to do some of the more advanced features like dynamic memory, snapshots, and live migration. This can be fixed by manually 'editing' the XenServer version string in the xapi program, as describe don the Xen wiki. After '''each new installation and upgrade''' of the xapi binary: | ||
