Managing XenServer with a XenCenter and Xen Orchestra Web Interfaces – Part – 7

Using Xen Orchestra

With all of the building out of the way, it’s time to learn how to use Xen Orchestra. The first step to managing XenServer hosts in XO is to add the server. Clicking the ‘Add server‘ button on the home page will launch the add server prompt.

Provide the prompt with the proper credentials and hostname/IP address for the XenServer to connect to and upon successful authentication, XO will display the XenServer host information.

Much of the functionality from XenCenter has been built into Xen Orchestra as well but some of the options may be a little more obscure to find at first. Let’s walk through some of the commonly needed tools within Xen Orchestra.

Managing the XenServer hosts themselves can be accomplished by clicking the drop down arrow next to the name of each host or by clicking on the actual name a more detailed information page about the host can be obtained.

The first image is the drop down menu and the second image is the XenServer host specific page obtained by clicking on the name of the XenServer rather than the drop down menu.

From both of these options, several XenServer specific actions can be accomplished such as adding storage repositories, creating virtual guests, and even console access to the XenServer host itself.

Working with the guests themselves is also very easy within Xen Orchestra. By clicking the XO button in the top left of the page and then clicking on the virtual guest from the main screen, an administrator can control the many configuration options of virtual guests.

From the virtual guests page, many of the aspects of the virtual guest can be managed including rebooting, snapshots, copying, and console sessions.

One of the other administrative functions that Xen Orchestra provides is the ability to quickly migrate virtual guests to another server through a drag and drop interface.

To accomplish this, a pool of XenServers must be created with shared resources and added within the Xen Orchestra interface. Once the pool is added, the administrator simply has to navigate to the main page of XO and drag the virtual guest to the XenServer host in which it should be migrated.

Xen Orchestra provides a respectable amount of functionality and flexibility with the added bonus that it allows administrators to manage XenServer hosts from any machine with a web browser thus making it an ideal choice for administrators who also use Linux.

To read about more of the benefits and abilities of Xen Orchestra, please visit the administration manual located here.