How to deploy templates without using secondary storage on KVM
Introduction ShapeBlue have been working on a new feature for Apache Cloudstack 4.11.1 that will allow users to bypass secondary storage with KVM. The feature introduces a new way to use templates and ISOs, allowing administrators to use them without being cached on secondary storage. Using this approach Cloudstack administrators will not have to worry […]
CloudStack and the new XenServer licensing model
Citrix have announced that as of XenServer 7.3, the free version (including the ‘opensource’ version packaged by Citrix) will no longer have feature parity with the paid-for Standard version. Of the features which are restricted in the free version, a maximum pool size of 3 hosts and the removal of Xen Storage Motion are going to make the use of free XenServer to run production clouds pretty much untenable.
Host-HA for KVM Hosts in CloudStack | CloudStack Feature Deep Dive
Intro What is HA? “High availability is a characteristic of a system, which aims to ensure an agreed level of operational performance, usually uptime, for a higher than normal period. ” — Wikipedia HA in CloudStack is currently supported for VMs only. In order to have it enabled, the service offering of the VM should […]
Networking KVM for CloudStack
Introduction KVM hypervisor networking for CloudStack can sometimes be a challenge, considering KVM doesn’t quite have the matured guest networking model found in the likes of VMware vSphere and Citrix XenServer. In this blog post we’re looking at the options for networking KVM hosts using bridges and VLANs, and dive a bit deeper into the configuration […]
Recovering From a vCenter Failure
While, in my opinion VMware’s vSphere is the best performing and most stable hypervisor available, vCenter obstinately remains a single point of failure when using vSphere and it’s no different when leveraging vCenter in a CloudStack environment. Therefore, very occasionally there is a requirement to rebuild a vCentre server which was previously running in your […]
Recovery of VMs to new CloudStack instance
We recently came across a very unusual issue where a client had a major security breach on their network. As well as lots of other damage their CloudStack infrastructure was maliciously damaged beyond recovery. Luckily the hackers hadn’t manage to damage the backend XenServer hypervisors so they were quite happily still running user VMs and Virtual Routers, […]
System VM Upgrades
Recently we’ve seen a few clients being tripped up by the System VM upgrades during the CloudStack upgrades in multi-zone deployments. The issue occurs when the System VM is pre-deployed individually to multiple zones, rather than being a single template deployed to multiple zones. This may be done in error or because the specific version […]
XenServer Native HA with CloudStack | CloudStack Feature Deep Dive
Update – Following community feedback, Timeout Settings have now been added to the script Update – The HA settings in this post also apply to XenServer 6.5.0 onwards Warning: If you have applied Hotfix XS62ESP1004 to your XenServer 6.2 infrastructure and have not enabled Pool HA, in the event of your Pool Master going down, […]
How to Build a CloudStack Test Environment using VirtualBox
Introduction If you are new to Apache CloudStack and want to learn the concepts but do not have all the equipment required to stand-up a test environment, why not use your existing PC and VirtualBox. VirtualBox is a cross platform virtualisation application which runs on OSX, Windows, Linux and Solaris, meaning no matter what OS […]
How to upgrade an Apache CloudStack Citrix XenServer Cluster
So you have a Cluster of Citrix XenServers and you want to upgrade them to a new version, for example to go from XenServer 6.0.2 to XenServer 6.2, or simply apply the latest Hotfixes. As this is a cluster that is being managed by CloudStack it is not as simple as using the Rolling Pool Upgrade […]
