virtuEs.IT

… sharing my IT Quests

Archive for category HomeLab

Where’s the XenServer 6 auto start VM feature?

Oct 11

Posted by virtuEs in HomeLab, HowTo, Hypervisors | 8 Comments

Yesterday I finally had some hours left to spare at home to attend to my Homelab. as I’m prepping the environment for my next exam (A19 Citrix XenDesktop 5 Administration) I did wanted to upgrade the XenServers to the latest version. So I spent yesterday evening cleaning up the servers with the old VMs from previous studies and left the two XenApp 6.5 servers and my domain server in place.

 

Upgrading the XenServer Homelab

The upgrade itself was done easily with the single disk image. This time I was smart enough to learn from my previous mistake, so I brought down any running VMs (even disabled the auto start options to be sure) and started with my Pool Master upgrade, without triggering any Maintenance Mode. The upgrade went smoothly for both servers, so I was quickly up and running again and checking all VM settings.

 

VM auto start feature

I was a little puzzled on how I could set up my License Server VPX appliance to auto start on booting my XenServer, but I figured it was now set with the vApp features and settings. However the GUI did not offer a select box to enable the auto start feature at the Start Options in the General Properties of the VM. I did not configure HA as it is not necessary right now for my Homelab environment. I just made the assumption that creating and configuring the vApp would enable the auto start feature all the same. And turned off the Homelab servers to test it when I would boot my servers the next day.

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A new ambitious Quest: Taking my Citrix certification to the next level

Sep 11

Posted by virtuEs in HomeLab, Quests | 2 Comments

The last couple of years, I’ve been taken on new customer assignments that took placed me in new roles. No more administration of existing Citrix XenApp environments, but I was given the assignments to design new Citrix XenApp environments and be the one to decide how they would be implemented. After commenting on improvements I saw as an administrator, I was now in charge of making those design calls from the start. So I’ve spent the last years reading about a lot of features, new version improvements and design consequences for Citrix XenApp and XenServer environments.

And even though I’ve been complimented by customers on the quality of my design documents and seen my designs grow into production environments, I still miss some recognition as a Citrix Architect by my peers and some colleagues.

So it is time to take my CCA certifications to the next level and go for the CCEE and CCIA certifications and ensure my level of expertise is reflected by the right set of certificates.

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Solved: 200% Load on XenApp 5 for Windows 2008

Jul 25

Posted by virtuEs in HomeLab, Install | 5 Comments

I’ve been wrestling all weekend with the setup of a new training lab environment for my Citrix XenApp 5 certification studying. To quickly built my Citrix servers, I disabled the Windows firewall and run the developed scripts to auto install all prerequisites and the Citrix components. Everything seemed to be installing without problems and I quickly had my test environment up and running ….. at least so I thought.

When I tried to start a published application through the Web Interface I was presented with a vague error and a event log stating the XML service was too busy.

As I’m studying for the A08 Advanced Administration for XenApp, I figured I’d dive right into troubleshooting and get my hands-on experience with some tooling

So I started running some tests …

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Upgrade Citrix XenServer 5.5 to 5.6 FP 1

Dec 30

Posted by admin in HomeLab, Hypervisors | 5 Comments

With the release of XenServer 5.6 Feature Pack 1 it was due time to upgrade my Homelab to the latest version. So eagerly I started to burn the downloaded iso files for the install and linux supplement pack CDs and burned the ISO files to CDs. With a quick scan through the Admin Guide, I figured I understood the process and made my first mistake.

 

I performed the upgrade in the wrong order, so had to do some troubleshooting.

 
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Unattended installation of a Domain Controller

Aug 15

Posted by admin in HomeLab, HowTo, Install, Operating Systems | Comments off

So far I’ve written about the Homelab hardware I’ve purchased and some basic configurations for my Storage and XenServers. And with the post on Sysprepping a Windows 2008 Server, I’m ready to build my Windows 2008 Test environment. With a (sysprepped) Windows 2008 Template for my VMs, I can easily clone the needed Servers and get my lab up and running and build a Windows Domain with multiple Servers and ServerRoles.

The first step in building my Windows Domain is to convert a Windows Server 2008 Member Server into a Domain Controller with the dcpromo.exe command.

 

This post is my own personal mental note for the unattended installation of my Windows Server 2008 Domain Controllers.

 
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