virtuEs.IT

… sharing my IT Quests

How To ...

When you are setting up a Proof of Concept or a est environment, you often have to setup up de default environment, including setting up Domain Controllers, DNS and DHCP Services and more ...

This page shows a collection of short postings with those how-to answers to regular admin tasks of which the syntax might just have slipped you mind. This personal KnowledgeBase contains articles on the different tools and configuration settings I've used in scripts to automate the configuration and installation of Windows Servers, XenApp applications and Test tools.

Automatically start a vApp on XenServer boot

Jan 31

Posted by virtuEs in HowTo, Hypervisors, Scripts | 9 Comments

Yesterday I was made aware of a new blogpost by @MichelHelderman on Twitter by my colleague @KBaggerman who refered Michel to a blogpost I wrote on enabling the VM autostart through the CLI for XenServer 6.0.
This feature is no longer available through the XenCenter GUI in XenSeerver 6.0 as it was interfering with the HA features on XenServer.

Michel provides you with a great alternative, namely the introduction of the new vApp feature for XenServer 6.0, which allows you to group VMs on a XenServer and control the automatic startup of the entire VM group. Even allowing you to set the boot order and wait time between boots.

The only setback with using the new vApp feature to group you VMs is that the vApp itself cannot be configured to automatically start when a physical XenServer Host is booted. It still requires a manual action through the GUI or CLI to start the vApp and have all VMs booted in their set order. Something we most definately want to be automated.
As there is no attribute for the vApp to configure it to auto-start, like my previous post explains for individual VMs, there are alternative ways to have a vApp be automatically started when a XenServer Host boots.

In this blogpost I have gathered some of the alternative methods to implement the auto-start feature for your VMs as I have found them on the internet.

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XenServer 6.0 reference posters

Jan 10

Posted by virtuEs in HowTo, Hypervisors | No Comments

A very quick blogpost to keep track of some great reference posters that are created for Citrix XenServer 6.0.

 

Björn Andersson (diversetips.se) has created two great posters for XenServer 6.0:

In addition to the already published poster from the Citrix Community:

… a great set of reference posters to get the best out of your XenServer infrastructure!

 

 

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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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XenServer 5.6 FP1 – Config NIC settings & Multipathing

May 2

Posted by admin in HowTo, Hypervisors, Storage | 10 Comments

During the installation of your XenServer, you only configure basic settings for your management Network Interface Card (NIC). Further, and maybe even more complex, configuration of your NICs can be set with the XenCenter GUI or with the xe CommandLine Interface (CLI).
The xe CLI can be run locally at the command prompt of the XenServer Console within XenCenter or you can use the ex.exe, which is part of the XenCenter installation and allows and administrator to remotely manage a XenServer from the command prompt of the Windows desktop. With the CLI you can also easily script some of the common tasks to perform on a XenServer.

This post contains additional xe CLI examples that are used for NIC settings on your XenServer.

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RDS/CTX Shortcut Keys list

Nov 26

Posted by virtuEs in Favorites, HowTo, Remote Desktop Sessions | 1 Comment

A handy list to keep closeby is the shortcurt key list for Remote Desktop Connections and Citrix Sessions. So just to make sure I know where to find it, I’m posting the list on my site.

 

This post offers a list of shortcut keys that are available for RDS and CTX sessions.

 
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