Python's nest

Now, when 6.2 is available, those of us not having support subscription will have to install updates manually, it’s not that difficult, you just need to always start from pool master and never put it in maintenance mode prior to update.

1. Get update from Citrix site and upload it to pool master using scp
2. Connect to pool master via ssh or XenCenter console and upload update to pool database using following command:xe patch-upload filename=filename.xsupdate – it will show uuid of newly uploaded xotfix
3. Apply update using following command: xe patch-apply uuid=<UUID of the hotfix> host-uuid=<UUID of the pool master> (you can copy pool master uuid from XenCenter or from output of xe host-list)
4. Reboot pool master and continue with remaining servers in pool.

My Citrix XenServer pool is powered through network enabled APC Smart-UPS (6000 RT)

There are at least two ways of monitoring UPS state in order to shutdown pool members and VMs running in the pool when juice is over:

– apcupsd (installation used to be somewhat tricky before XenServer 5.6 and included some unsupported movements)

– getting values from UPS via SNMP and acting accordingly to them – the way which I went, and you’re welcome to see detailed route description.

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This morning XenCenter started to disconnect from pool almost immediately after it was started. Short backtrack revealed that only recent time adjustment on pool members could cause that. To fix this bad behavior of XenCenter I had to issue xe-toolstack-restart command via ssh on pool master.