Wäre es nicht toll, wenn man seine XenServer Umgebung auf einer USB Disk immer mit dabei haben könnte ?
Wenn die USB Disk direkt am eigenen Notebook laufen würde ?
Und wenn man nicht eine zusätzliche Maschine bräuchte, um den XenServer zu managen ?
Dass und wie das geht, habe ich in einem einfachen Tutorial dokumentiert. Dabei wird XenServer auf einer USB Disk an einem Laptop installiert, danach wird ein X Server und GNOME auf der USB Disk eingerichtet und anschliessend eine VM mit installiertem XenCenter über RDP aufgerufen.
Sozusagen eine “Demo in a box” 🙂
Das Dokument kann hier heruntergeladen werden: “XenServer_and_Gnome_on_your_USB_disk_DE.pdf”
Gruss
Ecki
Wouldn’t it be nice to have your XenServer environment allways with you on a USB disk ?
Wouldn’t it be nice, if this USB disk would function with your own notebook ?
And that you don’t need a second machine to run XenCenter on it ?
That this is possible and how to achieve this, is documented in my last tutorial. In this tutorial we will install XenServer on a USB harddisk attached to a laptop, then install X server and GNOME on this disk and then run an RDP session to a VM running on the XenServer and providing us with XenCenter.
A “demo in a box” 🙂
The tutorial can be downloaded here: “XenServer_and_Gnome_on_your_USB_disk_EN.pdf”
For the moment, this tutorial is availabel only in German, but i will upload an english version soon, so stay tuned…
The english version is now available too…
Regards
Ecki
Very nice tutorial!
Would you please provide more details regarding how to connect to XenServer using WinSCP? For example, please provide details regarding what port number and protocol to use. Also, is a “private key file” needed? If so, what should be used?
Thanks much!
Answering my own questions:
1) port number: 22
2) protocol: SCP
3) private key file: none needed
I was able to download and install the “X Window System†and “GNOME Desktop Environment†packages to XenServer 6.0.201. However, I am getting a few error messages when attempting to start Gnome. I’ll post here again if I can get those errors resolved.
As I wrote above, I was able to download and install the “X Window System†and “GNOME Desktop Environment†packages to XenServer 6.0.201. However, here’s what I got when I tried the “gdm” command:
[root@XenServer ~]# gdm
gdm_config_parse: Authdir /var/gdm does not exist. Aborting.
Any suggestions on how to resolve the above?
Hi GizmoChicken
i wrote this tutorial for XenServer 5.5 many years ago. I do not have a test environment with XenServer 6.0.2 anymore so it is hard for me to help you directly.
Googling for this error message shows many hits though so you might find an answer there.
Regards
Ecki
Hi Ecki,
Thanks so much for your quick reply. Yep, I noticed this was a old tutorial. But since the underlying CentOS hasn’t changed much from XenServer 5.5 to XenServer 6.0.2, I had hopes that your tutorial would still work. When I have a chance, I’ll try the tutorial again and will post the results if I can get gnome to start.
For others who have a similar interest (running Xen on a platform that can be managed by XenCenter but that also has a gui desktop), another alternative is to install Xen and XAPI (XenAPI) onto a desktop version of Ubuntu 12.04. Here’s a nice tutorial describing that process:
http://francispereira.com/blog/step-by-step-guide-to-setting-up-xen-and-xenapi-xcp-on-ubuntu-12-04-and-managing-it-with-xencenter/
Note that XAPI on Ubuntu 12.04 still has many bugs. So the idea of tackling the problem using your approach (adding a gui desktop to XenServer rather than adding XAPI to a desktop version of Ubuntu) still appeals to me.
Thanks again!
Regards,
GizmoChicken