Robbieg Posted November 16, 2009 Share Posted November 16, 2009 Host our web is ready to release to public our module that allows end user control for Citrix Xen Enterprise. Our testing so far has been limited to the free edition of Citrix Xen 5.0 with a very few testing on Xen Enterprise 5.0 At this moment the module supports the following. Check power status of vm (running, suspend, shutdown) Based on power status, boot, shutdown, and restart. Mrtg bandwidth collection. We do not plan to offer Provision services for this module. Because this module is close to release we can not release the source code. The cost of the product is $50 which also grants you access to the released version of the module. Sing up link is here 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cyberneticos Posted November 16, 2009 Share Posted November 16, 2009 Nice Start, congratulations. Would be nice if in the future you can add provisioning feature, we could be interested. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robbieg Posted November 17, 2009 Author Share Posted November 17, 2009 thanks for the response. we are a little stuck on how to provision a VPS. Sure we can tell Xen to clone an image you have setup within the Xen cluster... but how do you know what ip address it has once its booted? If there was timely way of getting the ip address from the VPS, we could provision the VPS within this module. Yes there is a way you can get the ip address of the VPS once the VM is booted, has an ip address, and Xen tools service is started... but that's way to long for a module to wait for that information to then turn around and give it to the customer. One option that has been brought to the table is that we could do some advance information hand out. As in the module picks an ip address and sends an email to the admin for provision... but that does not help the admin out very much. I would like to open this forum post for other options the community may have. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cyberneticos Posted November 17, 2009 Share Posted November 17, 2009 I've never used xen enterprise, but with open source xen, you can get/assign the IP from the .cfg file (which is what's used to boot up the vps, assign it's memory, amd lvm space. Does that exist in enterprise ? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robbieg Posted November 17, 2009 Author Share Posted November 17, 2009 Your correct. This is how it's done in the community edition of Xen and that's how our community edition of the module sets up new VM's. link to that is here To our knowledge, there is no way of setting an IP address of a vm during creation time with Xen enterprise. There is a way to get the IP address of the interface but that’s after Xen tools is running and the server has an IP address. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vince512 Posted November 18, 2009 Share Posted November 18, 2009 I myself do not need it to provision....some things should be done manually...for me the biggest issue was to be able to give the user the ability to securely control their VM (start, stop, reboot, etc) and to be able to track their bandwidth use within whmcs for billing purposes. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robbieg Posted November 18, 2009 Author Share Posted November 18, 2009 I myself do not need it to provision....some things should be done manually...for me the biggest issue was to be able to give the user the ability to securely control their VM (start, stop, reboot, etc) and to be able to track their bandwidth use within whmcs for billing purposes. this module does that for you. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ravotech Posted November 22, 2009 Share Posted November 22, 2009 What is the difference between the XEN ENT module and the XEN community edition feature wise? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spudstr Posted November 22, 2009 Share Posted November 22, 2009 Your correct. This is how it's done in the community edition of Xen and that's how our community edition of the module sets up new VM's. link to that is here To our knowledge, there is no way of setting an IP address of a vm during creation time with Xen enterprise. There is a way to get the IP address of the interface but that’s after Xen tools is running and the server has an IP address. Sure there is, just means you have to do a custom kick start script when you deploy a vm instead of cloning a vm, you need to kick start its own install. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael.Terence Posted November 22, 2009 Share Posted November 22, 2009 done any testing with xenserver 5.5 (the current version)? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robbieg Posted November 23, 2009 Author Share Posted November 23, 2009 done any testing with xenserver 5.5 (the current version)? Hello, Yes we have done testing with Xen 5.5. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robbieg Posted November 23, 2009 Author Share Posted November 23, 2009 What is the difference between the XEN ENT module and the XEN community edition feature wise? The big differences is the type of commands it gives to Xen. The community edition uses XM and xen server 5.5 uses XE. The Xen Enterprise version accounts for this. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robbieg Posted November 23, 2009 Author Share Posted November 23, 2009 Sure there is, just means you have to do a custom kick start script when you deploy a vm instead of cloning a vm, you need to kick start its own install. How would that work with Windows? the scope of this module is to make use of the XE command and it's full potential. At this time we find no documentation supporting IP address assignment. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spudstr Posted November 23, 2009 Share Posted November 23, 2009 How would that work with Windows? the scope of this module is to make use of the XE command and it's full potential. At this time we find no documentation supporting IP address assignment. I am not sure, I am not that well versed with windows so I cannot answer you. Most windows vm deployments are done via dhcp anyway. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robbieg Posted November 23, 2009 Author Share Posted November 23, 2009 I am not sure, I am not that well versed with windows so I cannot answer you. Most windows vm deployments are done via dhcp anyway. This is an option and once the VM gets the Ip address we can pull it using the XE command. The problem is too many things can go wrong with this type of setup. The main problem we have seen is if the DHCP server is down, the VM will never get an ip address. Thus the module would wait forever on an ip address filed to be filled on a VM that will never get an IP address. Since the whole point of a provision module is to send the customer access instructions, this would not work out very well. The second most common issue we saw was the DHCP server being out of available ip address. Our community version pulls the IP address out of an SQL table. If there are none available, it fails before attempting to create the VM and the administration staff is instantly notified about it. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ovais Posted November 23, 2009 Share Posted November 23, 2009 Hello, We are planning to use it with Xen Server 5.5, is it fully compatible for mentioned functions :- Check power status of vm (running, suspend, shutdown) Based on power status, boot, shutdown, and restart. Mrtg bandwidth collection. Also would it run perfectly with multiple Xen Servers?? Thank You. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robbieg Posted November 23, 2009 Author Share Posted November 23, 2009 My answers are in bold. Hello, We are planning to use it with Xen Server 5.5, is it fully compatible for mentioned functions :- Check power status of vm (running, suspend, shutdown) Yes Based on power status, boot, shutdown, and restart.Yes Mrtg bandwidth collection.Yes Also would it run perfectly with multiple Xen Servers??Yes Thank You. Sounds like you could use a sales presentation on this. Which we would be happy to provide to you. email sales[@]hostourweb.com to setup up a date and time. At this time, we are able to provide English speaking only. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
netearth Posted November 29, 2009 Share Posted November 29, 2009 Hi there, I would be interested in the Enterprise version (not community), does it or can it support full HA? Just popped to your site and it states it is BETA, I see above the original post was 16/11 I assume it is still in beta? What support and upgrade options are there, is there a renewal fee each year etc? Although mentioned earlier in the thread, is provisioning is still a taboo, if so, I will get one of my bods who looks after our boxes who is an old hat linux console man (ie he doesn't like or use xencentre). Thanks, Chris 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robbieg Posted November 30, 2009 Author Share Posted November 30, 2009 Hello, Since this module does not provision HA does not come into the picture here. I say that for the following reasons. Once your Xen server becomes a member of a pool, it's our understanding you can issue commands to the VM from either the pool master or the machine running the vm. You would setup and install the client side of this module on the pool master and tell WHMCS to talk directly to the pool master. If the pool master fails, you would simply setup the client on the next pool master, and change the ip address within WHMCS to the new ip address. As far as bandwidth collection goes... it's not tested within a pool environment. We use a combination of SNMP and MRTG with RRD. SNMP is installed on the Xen server and to my understanding, that information is not shared within the pool. The beta testers have so far tested issuing commands within a pool, but already had each Xen-server setup as separate servers within WHMCS and therefore had SNMP and MRTG with RRD installed. When bandwidth collection ran, it found each and every Xen-server and knew which VM ran on which Xen-Server to collect data from. To answer your deployment question... I doubt there is any way to specify an ip address during deployment time with the current supported version of Xen-server. With xen community... we make use of Xen-tools which allows us to give all necessary networking options during provision. Since Xen-server offers no friendly way of giving console access and power control to your customers (unless you use Xen-server-web), this modules at the very least gives them power control. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hpham Posted December 28, 2009 Share Posted December 28, 2009 It's still beta and you are still asking money for testing? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robbieg Posted December 28, 2009 Author Share Posted December 28, 2009 Hello, we have not updated this module in awhile and are currently focusing on the released version of our product for xen 3.4.1 / 3.4.2 (http://www.xen.org). 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cyberneticos Posted January 8, 2010 Share Posted January 8, 2010 Any screenshots to see how this looks ? We are testing out Xenserver 5.5 and might also be interested in purchasing 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cyberneticos Posted January 9, 2010 Share Posted January 9, 2010 I'd like to contribute to the provisioning portion of this module. Are you guys not going in that direction becuase of difficulty or interest ? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robbieg Posted January 12, 2010 Author Share Posted January 12, 2010 Interest. Our community version has more activity then the enterprise version. The enterprise version does the basics which allow control of the VM after creation along with bandwidth collection. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cyberneticos Posted January 21, 2010 Share Posted January 21, 2010 (edited) Will this module charge for bandwidth overage ? And if so, is there a way to restrict BW calculation to just apache, mysql, ftp and email ? (promiscuous mode will make the BW sky rocket, I think, right?) Edited January 21, 2010 by cyberneticos 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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