Valuable Lessons Learned Upgrading XCP 1.6 to XenServer 6.2

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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.

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The following link is to Xen XCP FAQ explaining XCP cloud functionality being rolled into XenServer 6.2 and all XenServer releases going forward: http://www.xenproject.org/component/content/article/100-misc/148-xcp-and-xenserver-faq.html

 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.

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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:

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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.

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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:

o   xe 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!

 

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