Setting Up Citrix Xen Virtualization

Citrix Xen (formerly from XenSource) is a commercial variant of Xen that uses the same underlying concepts and kernel as open source Xen, but a completely different set of command-line tools. Cloudmin supports Citrix Xen as a virtualization type, but treats it differently from regular Xen due to differences in the disk format used, API and capabilities.

Installing a Citrix Xen Host System

Citrix provides an ISO image for a Linux installer that can setup a new system as a Xen host, which can be downloaded from http://xenserver.org/ . As far as I know, they do not have an installer which works on existing Linux systems, so you will need to dedicate one or more physical systems to Xen hosting.

Once a host system has been setup for Citrix Xen, you can configure Cloudmin to manage it as follows :

  1. Login to Cloudmin and go to Add System -> Add physical system , and add the new Citrix Xen host. You will need to enter the SSH password you selected when the host was setup.
  2. Go to Host Systems -> Citrix Xen Host Systems and click on Register a system for Citrix Xen hosting.
  3. Select the host you added in step 1, and select a DNS zone to add new VMs to in the Add Citrix Xen systems to DNS domain menu.
  4. Under Network options select or enter the IP ranges you want to assign to VMs on this host.
  5. Click the Save button.
  6. Go to Cloudmin Settings -> New System Images and download at least one Citrix Xen image.
  7. You should now be able to create new virtual systems at Create System -> Create Citrix Xen VM
Adding an Existing Citrix Xen Host System

If you are already using Citrix Xen on your network, you can have Cloudmin take over management of existing VMs as follows :

  1. Login to Cloudmin and go to Add System -> Add physical system , and add the existing Citrix Xen host. You will need to enter the SSH password you selected when the host was originally setup.
  2. Go to Host Systems -> Citrix Xen Host Systems and click on Register a system for Citrix Xen hosting.
  3. Select the host you added in step 1, and select a DNS zone to add new VMs to in the Add Citrix Xen systems to DNS domain menu.
  4. Under Network options select or enter the IP ranges you want to assign to any future VMs on this host.
  5. Click the Save button.
  6. Go to Add System -> Add Citrix Xen VM.
  7. In the Internet hostname field, enter either the IP address or a resolvable hostname for the VM being added.
  8. In the SSH login mode section, enter the root password for Linux on the VM.
  9. From the Citrix Xen VM menu select the name of the VM you want to import.
  10. Click the Add System button.
  11. Repeat steps 6 to 10 for each system you want to import.