Last week we released a new XenServer multipathing guide: CTX136354--Configuring Multipathing for XenServer http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX136354 This guide provides dramatically improved guidance about how to configure XenServer multipathing, including iSCSI, Fibre Channel, and ALUA. It also provides procedures to help you validate your configuration is correct. This guide significantly revises previous guidance, especially in relation to creating SRs for use with multipathing. Although, this guide applies to the XenServer 6.x ...

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Citrix XenServer 6.1 has won the “Best Virtualization Product” award from “IT Decision-Making in the Future - 2012 Outstanding Enterprise-Class IT Products Selection", organized by TechTarget China. The reason: Citrix XenServer 6.1 is the industry's leading enterprise-class virtualization platform. XenServer can create and manage virtualization infrastructure of server, desktop and cloud computing, and can provide a shortcut in transitioning to cloud computing for enterprises. The award ...

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For those who like more technical blog posts, here are a few random technical tidbits about the new Workload Balancing 6.0 (Beta) virtual appliance (VPX). Tips During the WLB virtual appliance configuration, pressing Enter accepts the defaults for all choices. For example, pressing Enter when configuring the database, will use default user name for the database account. You can now generate reports from the WLB tab in XenCenter. ...

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Here's how to find the public XenServer 6.0 Beta: 1. Log on to your MyCitrix account. You do not need to be an existing customer. You can create one for free. 2. Go to XenServer Beta Central (http://www.citrix.com/xenserver/beta) – and click the Download Now button. 3. On the XenServer 6.0 Beta page, expand the Show Downloads link for the item you want to download. The files for XenServer ...

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The XenServer Engineering team has just released a new guide that provides advanced design and best practice information about networking: CTX129320 - Designing XenServer Network Configurations. We wrote this directly in response to your requests for more information about XenServer networking. We are listening. This guide builds on the information in CTX127885 - Introduction to XenServer Networking and adds advanced information about, amongst other topics: Bonding Storage networks Jumbo ...

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Watching the Royal Wedding this morning, I was struck to see Prince Harry sitting by himself in a carriage full of flower girls. He must realize that when his wedding comes, it won't be as elaborate as Prince William's, since Harry is, after all, the "spare" (as in the "heir and the spare"). In my spite of sympathy for the spare Harry, I was enchanted by ...

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With the cliffhanger ending of my last post, I left you all breathlessly wondering why the way XenServer Workload Balancing (WLB) works is important. Understanding how Workload Balancing work is critical in understanding how to tweak your thresholds. Workload Balancing recommendations are triggered primarily by thresholds, values for resource metrics that, when one is crossed, indicate to Workload Balancing that it needs to make a recommendation. You can improve the timing of Workload ...

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Just to let you know we've been listening -- and we are grateful for your feedback -- we've now released updates to: CTX127330 -- Citrix XenServer Workload Balancing Administrator's Guide CTX127329 -- Citrix XenServer Workload Balancing Installation Guide While we are planning to continue improving these guides, we are hoping they are significantly better. We corrected issues one of our JDP partners helpfully pointed out; specifically, we fixed horrifically out-of-date ...

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This Thursday Steve Benton and Lee Bushen are doing a master's class on networking. This time they are holding it for the North American time zones. However, anyone is welcome to attend - and, of course, it is free. You just need to sign up here. For those of you who haven't attended a master's class before, you're in for a treat. These guys are a ...

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Are you wondering where you can get more documentation for XenServer's new Distributed Virtual Switch feature? If so, see: CTX127585  - vSwitch Controller User Guide. This guide talks about the management console for our Open vSwitch integration. CTX127321   - XenServer 5.6 Feature Pack 1 Administrator's Guide.  For those of you who are thinking, "Well, gosh, what is a Distributed Virtual Switch?", XenServer 5.6 Feature Pack 1 introduced a new networking management appliance, the Distributed Virtual ...

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