I was heading off to the bedroom to read a few pages of the latest I’m book reading while I performed a XenServer Storage motion on a couple of my virtual Linux servers after upgrading my NAS memory and storage capacity the last few nights and I could not find the book I was reading. I looked in my favorite eBook readers on my Motorola Atrix checking Moon Reader, Cool Reader, Aldiko and Kindle but none of the books on my continued reading were the fantasy book I had just started by reading a few pages of earlier this week.
Finally I clicked on an ad for an audible reader download while closing one of the eBook readers and looked over to my end table when I realized where my book was. I had been reading an actual physical book that you turn pages on made of paper! I had not read a paperback book in so long I failed to realize that what I was looking for was a book made out of actual tree materials! I found my book and I will be turning actual pages by hand, will not be able to automatically go to where I left off unless I leave a paper book mark, I will not be able to automatically look up the definition of words etc..
I feel this is like going back to nature or a trip to the past reading an actual novel not in electronic format. Looking over at my overstuffed bookshelf I am realizing that only a few years ago I was wondering where I was going to stuff anymore books I bought when I made bi-weekly trips to a used book barn to buy a handful of books at a time. Such nostalgia in a few years time of changed habits and expectations.
How have I done without FreeNAS for so long? This is like that fun gal that can go from the fine dining wine & tea, hang in the hood and then hit the outdoors without skipping a beat !
I built this NAS system earlier this year for my virtual environments mainly so they could be physically High Availability (HA) with shared storage networks that are redundant, multi-paths etc… I just needed one more piece to make it all work together and FreeNAS provides the interface, software know-how all together in a great Open Source package! Really the only thing holding me back has been I need to add another dedicated 20 amp circuit to go along with the one already in my computer room and I might add two more circuits because I like playing with stuff!
With FreeNAS I can share to any OS using all the usual suspects, NFS, iSCSI, CIFS, even Apple’s AFP which I have never used. I mainly use NFS & iSCSI and that let’s me create the storage needed for my XenServer & VMware virtual environment and present storage to my Linux and Windows servers as well as my Linux & Windows desktops.
So why do I say that FreeNAS is like that woman that can handle any environment without skipping a beat? Well FreeNAS has proven it can handle all the issues that come up without the use of a specific 3rd party app or additional handling of external devices one storage system does it all!
Here is what FreeNAS is doing that has me stoked :
Reliable storage making my Virtual environment HA where VM’s move from host to host seamlessly.
Used NFS to share out storage to save CloneZilla images of systems over LAN .
Outgrew my Linux desktop, built another Linux desktop system, shared NFS share to migrate the data in home directory that I needed.
Ran out of space on my Windows desktop, built another Windows desktop and needed to import Outlook mail to Thunderbird email but had no disk space on XP system (yes XP). Created 100gb iSCSI target on FreeNAS, downloaded Windows iSCSI initiator on XP system, format with NTFS, install Thunderbird email on iSCSI drive on windows XP start importing email to Thunderbird during day while I do other tasks. No need to install another hard drive on system or install Outlook again on my Windows 8.1 system.
Creating a media archive with all my music, movies, pictures, personal, financial, legal documents etc..
With Xenserver I can even use FreeNAS for my NFS ISO library so I can easily pick any OS or other ISO to boot off of to troubleshoot or build a VM.
I have one disk array acting as backup with FreeNAS.
Shares music I play on my Internet Radio station
I can keep the storage on specific LAN’s I now have 3 with one strictly storage but I may add another 1 or 2 since some of the iSCSI to my desktops are going over my traditional LAN’s.
FreeNAS adapts capably to whatever scenario I present and seamlessly just like the woman that can fit in anywhere, does it all and enjoys it! Haven’t met the gal like that yet but FreeNAS holds the blueprint!
Well I learned some valuable lessons about upgrading from XCP 1.6 to XenServer 6.2. The lessons were it was important to update to the latest version of XenCenter to match the version of XenServer you intend to update to first if using XenCenter manage systems and pay attention to your status output commands (I know I’ll explain).
For proper background information I updated my XCP1.6 installation with a local CDROM on my physical hosts system. I booted off the ISO DVD I created and it recognized my 1.6 XCP install asked if I wanted to update and followed the prompts from there. I was surprised that the XCP is no longer going to be developed but instead replaced by XenServer going forward since Citrix has now made XenServer fully Open Source.
As I mentioned if you will be interacting with XenCenter at all to talk to your host servers upgrade to the XenCenter version that corresponds to your latest XenServer release which is in this case of course 6.2 I made some changes on my slave host, the first system I updated in my 2 node cluster that I should not have due to the older version of XenCenter not to being able to properly render certain properties of my newly updated XenServer and giving incorrect information.
The way I found out about the XenCenter compatibility issue was when I tried to place my slave hosts system back into the shared pool after removing the slave to correct network interfaces that had disappeared. XenCenter told me it could not place my slave back into the pool with the master since they were different versions. This is when I updated XenCenter and then the master. The master server in the pool updated without any of the issues I had with the slave.
You can get the new XenCenter version by pointing to the newly upgraded XenServer host in a browser window:
The next issue I had to deal with was reconfiguring the network information I had lost when trying to get the slave recognized in the older version of XenCenter while in the pool with the master who was still @ XCP 6.1 at this time. I placed the proper NIC configurations on the network cards and then placed the slave back in the pools with the master.
Now I still could not get the slave to recognize my shared iSCSI storage once back in the pool while the master had no issues seeing the storage. Well to make a long discovery into a shorter story I had to destroy the previous shared pool plugin that existed previously on my system. I really thought that I had done that and tried to get the shared iSCSI storage plugged in several times. But there was a second plugin I had ignored but was pointing to the same shared storage that was causing me issues.
What I failed to realize was that while I had added the slave back into the pool with the same alphanumeric name I did not say “use the existing XenCenter name” therefore it added the slave XenServer host in with the same name but XenCenter and somehow the XenServer hosts still had the old information and treated it as a separate name. I actually had to delete the old name from the shared pool. There was also a leftover “Xen storage plugin configuration” I kept overlooking though it showed in the output I had ignored it since I knew it should have only one “Xen Storage Plugin configuration” I dealt with the most recent one.
To explain better in a more truncated way this is what I ended up doing to get the slave to see the iSCSI shared storage again on my newly upgraded XenServer 6.2 environment after I had corrupted the network configuration and storage repository:
–List shared iSCSI storage
o# xe sr-list type=lvmoiscsi
–Show the plugins if any associated with this iSCSI storage (this command showed output of two plugins one which I ignored and cause issues):
o# xe pbd-list sr-uuid=<SR UUID>
–Next unplug shared storage:
oxe pbd-unplug uuid=<PBD UUID>
–Next destroy plugin
o# xe pbd-destroy uuid=<PBD UUID>
o# xe pbd-destroy uuid=<PBD UUID>
–Then from XenCenter GUI I “detached” the shared storage and “forgot” the storage and then reattached and everything worked out just fine with both servers in the pool.
That is the story and its quite long but the actual work was much longer! The story to summarize when updating to a newer version fist work with the newer version tools since they are backwards compatible in most cases. Also never neglect your output it’s there for a reason!
I wanted to have some sort of failover for my XCP 1.6 virtual environment prior to going to that full time with backups and restore procedures in place plus some failover capability using HA-Lizard. I got a great indication I’m heading in the correct direction when a couple of hours ago I started shutting down the VM’s on my XCP system and they kept restarting.
A big duh I had implemented HA-Lizard Saturday evening verified settings and was enabled on my shared pool on XCP and all VM’s residing on those servers within those pools. So as I shutdown each VM gracefully from the OS I noticed that each time it restarted.
I went on the CLI of my Master XCP server in the pool and did the following to finally shutdown first the HA-Lizard environment and then the XCP environment until later when I make more additions and have time to work on it:
Go to the XCP Master Server Console
#service ha-lizard status –>> verified HA-Lizard running
#service ha-lizard stop –>> Stopped HA-Lizard service but HA-Lizard watchdog service restarted HA-Lizard service
#service ha-lizard status –>> verified HA-Lizard HA service running after started by HA-Lizard watchdog service
#service ha-lizard -w stop –>> Stops HA-Lizard watchdog service and HA-Lizard HA service
#service ha-lizard -w status –>> Verify HA-Lizard watchdog service stopped
#service ha-lizard status –>> Verify HA-Lizard HA service stopped
Shutdown each VM from OS and they now stayed shutdown.
Placed XCP servers in maintenance mode and then shut them down.
I also noticed that before I shutdown the HA-Lizard services if I went to place the XCP host master server or slave server in maintenance mode I was notified it would migrate my VM guest OS’! How sweet is that!
This HA-Lizard XCP combination may be just what I have been looking for a truly Open Source virtual HA environment !
Well I just wanted to install Fedora 19 and didn’t want to move hardware around right now plus I need to move some web/game server functions to virtual systems again anyway so I built an Fedora 19 guest system on one of my XCP 1.6 nodes to play with for a bit.
They didn’t change much on the Anaconda Fedora install, you can still only select one group of packages i.e “Web”, “Infrastructure”, “Gnome Desktop”, Cinnamon Desktop”, “KDE Desktop”, etc.. Someone sincerely believes that limiting us to the selections they feel are necessary to your environment for a simple UI (User Interface) install is a ok. So now you have to take the time to build a kickstart or manually install the packages you wanted after initial install. Not very time efficient when you just want to do a quick UI install as opposed to installing a group of systems using kickstart.
They also kept the the partitioning User Interface clumsy and illogical, at least to me it is. I like the way the let you select the disk or LUN’s to use but when you go to partition its a mess. Looks like they want you to declare your mount points before you have even created the volume groups and decided which disks will belong to what volume groups!
Once in the partition screen you can use the drop down to create an LVM volume group but you have to already have to have a mount point selected and in my case that mount point belonged to another disk and volume group. I was able to get it to work but you have to temporarily assign the highlighted mount point to the new volume group, create your new mount point making it about 1mb and then switch the mount points around later and adjust the sizes. Then you have to make sure you double-check to insure when you highlight the mount point it shows the proper size and volume group designation! Then the interface kept dying on me so I decided to add the extra disks and volume groups manually after the initial install along with the extra software packages I want.
After everything is selected you hit click install and then it asks you for a “root” password and to create a regular system user and that password while you watch it start the process of installing packages below. That is way to bizarre and backwards. This should come before you hit install.
I love change and there has to be change. We are conditioned that way as humans to survive because if we didn’t change and adapt in a world that hurtles around the sun and has winds, water and other elements that change the environment we do not survive.. Digressing here but in the Linux world for some reason we have lost something, its almost as if the people developing this are former MS Windows people bent on taking away options and hiding things. I understand the need for more acceptance to keep this going but taking away options and ASSuming everyone wants to dumb down options is the wrong way to go.
Anyway got it installed had to do a bunch of manual stuff no problem just extra time plus it was able to pickup my proper timezone here in Fedora 19 as opposed to Fedora 18 so some progress. Plus after all of these years of using Linux since the early/mid ’90’s I still love it and its my OS of choice but my old friend BSD is a peeking around the corner!
Well I overloaded the circuit with te number of systems I had on it and didn’t have my UPS on so it took down my site and support systems. I had some of my new systems I had built plus new disk arrays and the power went off.
Well I moved my desktops systems off of the server circuit and will make a few more adjustments like that plus hopefully hook back up my UPS that blew its voltage regulator. I should have went with a 40 amp circuit instead of a 20 amp but of course had less powerful systems then. I also will not have this many systes once my new setup is completed the old systems will be shutdown!
I did some cleanup of MySQL last night and this morning. Basically the forum database based on phpBB was out of control and had grown huge along with the MySQL files in /var/lib/mysql/ for that database along with the “ibdata1” file and log files also in that directory.
I ended up taking the following steps:
Cleared some file space since I was @ 100% by uninstalling some unneeded packages
Insured that all the databases were error free:
“mysqlcheck –repair –all-databases
Dumped the databases to another directory in my home directory where I keep backup files using “Webmin”.
Dropped all of the databases
Stopped MySQL using “systemctl”:
“systemctl stop mysqld.service”
Copied the ibdata1 file and accompanying log files to my backup directory just in case I needed to recreate the environment.
Restarted MySQL service:
“systemctl start mysqld.service”
Restored all of the individual database schemas using MySQL Workbench not having anything to do with phpBB forums
Decided I would try to keep the current database schema for the phpBB forums but since I had done little decided it would be a waste of time.
Dropped the forum phpBB database again after I had restored it and it continued to take up lots of space and there were no tools I found in phpBB to prune the database
Stopped MySQL
“systemctl stop mysqld.service”
This time deleted/var/lib/ibdata1 and associated log files
Started MySQL
“systemctl start mysqld.service”
Reinstalled phpBB using my current customized config files but with new database I created.
Well one of my rose bushes with long stem red roses is in ful bloom already this year and looking great! This is my favorite rose bush because it blooms the whole year is not a hybrid so thus it smells as great as it looks! My other rose bushes have one or two flowers and I anticipate them bloomimg very soon but none are usually as nice looking as this bush!
Well I trimmed up the existing flowers, roses and pulled weeds from the front flower beds, planted some new rose bushes and also planted most of my vegetable garden this weekend. I almost forgot I also pulled a bunch of weeds from the narrow corridor behind the house Now I just have a bit of touch up on all the garden beds plus some clean-up and pressure washing of the concrete in the back and toss a few more items then I start inside of the house & garage!
This year in the vegetable garden so far I have planted, jalapeno peppers, habanera peppers, Portugal hot peppers, green, red & orange bell peppers, beef steak tomatoes, yellow pear tomatoes, red cherry tomatoes, pumpkin, yellow straight squash, zucchini squash, red okra, green okra, black beauty egg plants, collard greens, black eyed peas, cucumbers, lettuce salad mix of seeds, snap peas, bush beans and some items I am sure I have forgotten. I just hope it will be a productive year after last year letting the raspberry & grape vines over run everything!
As far as the flower garden I added some nice variety of roses since I’m tired of doing different annuals each year. I added a Black Baccara rose bush, a White Honey rose bush and a Twilight rose bush that has dark violet hues. The Black Baccara will have red buds with heavy black tinting, while the White Honey will have a snow white looking flower along with the Twilight nice additions to the gardens with my other pink, red and orange roses!
A few pictures show below show current progress but once everything is in full bloom watch out vegetable & flower gardens will be rocking this year!
