To The Last Tribe Consulting

This is the second part in my Commodity XenServer series.  Check out Part 1 here.

The XenServer Install

Now that I had the basic system  stable and ready to roll, I fired up the XenServer install CD.  (At this point, I was running a SATA hardrive, with an IDE DVD-ROM Drive.)  

The installer would run fine up until the point where I had to choose where I wanted to install from.  When I selected the local DVD drive, I would get the error message, “Base installation repository was not found at that location. Please check and try again.”  

After searching the Citrix support forums, I found that other people were having the same issue, but nobody had any answers yet.  So I did a ton of troubleshooting:

-I re-downloaded and burned another copy of the installer

-I tried installing via FTP and NFS

-I disabled all non-essential BIOS functions

-I removed all non-essential hardware

None of these worked, but I got a tip from the Citrix forums–That the issue probably had something to do with hard disks/SATA/IDE.  So I tried disabling all unused IDE/SATA channels, which was a no go.

 I then swapped out the IDE DVD drive for a SATA DVD drive and disabled all IDE channels on the motherboard–And it worked!

I posted my results in this Citrix forum thread.  

As I’m looking at the thread, it looks like there is another workaround, without having to go to SATA: (From the thread)

After starting the install and selecting the keyboard …

1) Hit Alt+F2 to switch to another console window
2) enter “modprobe ide-generic” return
3] switch back to the install window by hitting Alt+F1

After I got this issue worked out, everything else fell into place, and I came up with a working XenServer 5.0 Update 3 install.

The only other issuing I am still having is that the onboard NIC is realtek, and I can’t seem to get working drivers–This is not a big deal though, since I threw in a Netgear NIC I had laying around, and then bought an Intel Pro dual-nic PCI card, which XenServer had drivers for out-of-the-box.

This wraps up the Xen-Server install, which I am happy to say is humming along just fine with 5 VMs currently active.

Josh

This is the first post of my Commodity XenServer series, where I will be describing my experience in putting together a Commodity XenServer.

First off,  let’s take a look at the specs and a photo:

Specs

-An old, mid-tower Antec Case

-Antec TruePowerTrio 430W

-ASUS M3N78-EM mATX

- AMD Phenom 9850 Quad Core Black Edition

-Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro 92mm CPU Cooler

-8GB 4 x 2GB  Corsair DDR2 1066

-Western Digital Caviar SE16 SATA 640GB (SATA/7200 RPM/16MB)

-LITE-ON Black 18X DVD-ROM SATA

I was able to find the majority of the components on sale / rebates / discounted, etc.  For instance, the CPU was a NewEgg Open Box for $83, instead of the retail price of $160+.  This allowed me to get a pretty decent setup for my budget.

Here is a photo before the build

The Build, Stress Testing, & Overlocking

Overall, the physical build went fine.  At first I wasn’t sure if the AC CPU Cooler was going to fit with the memory slots so close, but I was able to finagle it together.

I started off by running memtest86+ overnight, to make sure the memory was good–Although the testing went fine, I noticed the RAM was running at 800Mhz instead of the advertised 1066Mhz, but I left it alone for now.

I then installed Vista, so I could do some benchmarking and stability testing.

I wanted to do a bit of overclocking, (why else would you have a Black Edition Phenom, which features an unlocked multiplier?)

This is where I ran into the memory clock issue, which I will devote a future post to.

Suffice to say, the final result was a CPU overclock  of 8%, to 2800 Mhz / Core, for a total of  11,200 Mhz.  I know I could have OC’ed it more, but since it will be serving in a server role, I didn’t think the extra CPU vs. Power was worth it.

With the build and OC done, I went on to the XenServer Install, forthcoming.

Josh

As I alluded to in my previous post, putting in an actual firewall in my home network (instead of the soho linksys “firewall”), was the first step in my plans for World Domination.  

I now reveal my second step:  

To build a home-server worthy of my use. 

I have just finished buying the last component for the new server–I will be putting Citrix XenServer on it, and be able to use the ensuing Virtual Machines for a couple things: 

-As I start working toward my GIAC Gold Certifications for my Silver GSEC, and soon-to-be silver GCIH, I needed a good Virtual Machine box that I can use for my research for the papers I will be writing.

-Research: I would like to be able to test out stuff like OSSIM and Spiceworks

-Finally, I would like to host a domain, possibly anapologetos.com on FreeBSD on the server–For practical experiance.

I will be writing a post in the next week detailing the specs and how the build went.

Josh