Xenserver Guide

There is some information in the wiki to get you started:

 http://wiki.openstack.org/XenServerDevelopment

If that isn't enough, hopefully some of the people actively deploying with XenServer can chime in.

Vish

On Jul 15, 2011, at 2:51 PM, Troy Black wrote:

> New question #164961 on OpenStack Compute (nova):
> https://answers.launchpad.net/nova/+question/164961
>
> I am trying to deploy a proof of concept but I am a little unsure of exactly how I install OpenStack on Xenserver. My other question is do I need to Install Xenserver first and then install the Openstack Service on Xenserver or can I somehow have my OpenStack Controller on a seperate physical server and then have it talk to my Xenserver? I am basically trying to understand my deployment options. If I have multiple Xenservers does each server need to have OpenStack installed to work? How do I attach external storage in this scenario?
>
> My basic setup as of right now consists of 4 Xenservers that I would like to use to deploy both Linux and Windows VM's. I would like to leverage the OpenStack services and also be able to connect to my 3 external storage devices in the process.
>
> I would appreciate any help that can be offered to help me make the right choices for this test environment.
>
> Thanks
>
> --
> You received this question notification because you are a member of Nova
> Core, which is an answer contact for OpenStack Compute (nova).

Hi Vish,

I have already seen this wiki page but it does not really provide the information I need. I am hoping someone who has deployed this in a Xen environment will have an answer for my problem.

Thanks again!

I understand that I need to install the plugin on Xenserver and Compute on a separate server etc but I wanted to know if the server could be virtual or if it needs to be physical? Also I want to use iSCSI storage to store my VM images without using local etc I could not find how to accomplish this on the wiki. Thank you again for your reply.

Troy,

We install a small vm on XenServer that acts as the compute node. We allocate the smallest amount of ram possible to the compute node and use the rest of the ram on XenServer for vms that get allocated through nova. There is no need for the compute node to be physical. To your question of getting XenServer to use iscsi to store the vms... there isn't a doc on the wiki how to do this yet. It would be awesome if you could document this as I'm sure you're not the only one that wants to do this.

Thanks,
pvo

Hi Paul,

I am working on the iSCSI issue and as soon as I get it working I will post how I got it working. Thanks for the tip on making the Compute node virtual. One question, how many compute nodes are needed for 4 xenservers? Are you using Swift at all? Does your compute node manage your VM's and when you create a VM does it show up automatically in your xenserver console? I am trying to see how well Compute integrates with Xenserver etc.

Thanks again.

For 4 XenServers you'll need 4 compute nodes. Each node will have a nova.conf that points to its xapi interface and will need credentials for that XenServer to manage it.

We are using Swift with Glance to store images to build from and for snapshot storage.

The compute nodes do show up in my XenServer console just like any vm.

Hi Paul,

Are your Xenserver in a pool? I have one Xenserver setup with 1 Compute Node setup as a VM. I have my Xenservers setup in a pool I am not sure if this makes a difference. I found out that iSCSI is in fact supported in Cactus release for XENAPI. I am testing out a few things to see if I can use external SR instead of Local SR. Ill keep you posted. Thanks for your help!

We don't have them in a pool as we don't use shared storage. All our storage is local to the box.

Good luck.

Hello.

I am trying to install openstack with xenServer.

I also use xenServer in a pool and shared storage(NFS).

I got this error msg( IOError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/dev/xvdb' ) when I run vm instance with euca2ools.

I think it's why VDI made in local stroage had some permission problem when XenServer works in Pool and has shared_storage.

Also compute-node(vm installed nova-compute) has the hard disk made in shared_storage.

Do you have a good solution. Do you have any advance with your job?

Thank in advance your answer.

If I am using XenServer and the XenServer runs a small VM known as the service VM then for each XenServer do I need a Service VM running on it?

If I run a Xen Cluster the does the Service VM run on the Pool master or do I still need one per xen server in the cluster.

thanks

Steve,

Yes, you do need a Nova service VM for each.

OpenStack is not yet XenServer pool aware, but there is work in progress for this. See the following blueprint:

https://blueprints.launchpad.net/nova/+spec/host-aggregates

Thanks,
Todd