1

I'm currently running XenServer 6.5 on seven Dell PowerEdge Blade Servers. I'm looking to upgrade to XenServer 7.1. From what I've read online the upgrade is pretty simple - download the iso, reboot the server, boot from the iso and select the upgrade option.

You must start with the master server first then proceed with the others. Is the upgrade this straight forward? Has anybody carried out this update and ran into unforeseen issues (update fails, errors, problems with storage repositories, etc.)? I'm just trying to get an idea of what to expect, or possibly expect, when I take this on. Thanks!

jrd1989
  • 628
  • 10
  • 35

2 Answers2

1

I tried upgrading the XenServer. Results are as expected, all VMs are up and running. However, it would be better if you gracefully shut down all the VMs running on the servers, upgrade the master and then power those on.

The upgrade process is so simple as you mentioned. You will not face any problem there.

Amit24x7
  • 111
  • 6
  • I ended up upgrading my 8 Dell blade servers to 7.2. Everything worked fine for 7 of them - between migrating VM's and the upgrade process it took about 1 - 1.5 hours each. The upgrade broke 1 server though- had a kernel panic so I had to do a complete reinstall. Other than it taking much longer than anticipated and the 1 mishap everything went fine - functioning as they should, VM's are working fine. Still need to upgrade xen tools though. – jrd1989 Jul 18 '17 at 12:41
  • Can you please mention the details of the server where it didn't work as we expected. And also, why were you migrating your VMs. Even when I was trying, for few servers, this upgrade process took longer than usual. – Amit24x7 Jul 18 '17 at 13:56
  • All of my servers are Dell PowerEdge M620 blade servers. I can't remember the specific details but it failed during the upgrade process, just waiting for the percent to hit 100%. It said that it encountered an issue and when I tried upgrading it again (I was curious if it would revert the changes), it failed. I migrated my VM's off of each server prior to upgrading since it was recommended and I didn't want anything to happen to them in case the upgrade failed. – jrd1989 Jul 19 '17 at 19:41
  • Thanks for the information. I'm not sure why this happened with one of your servers. However, the upgrade can be done without any migration but it was good on your part to take precautions. – Amit24x7 Jul 20 '17 at 07:17
0

I had problem with a Storage Repositories. Not a fatal error, but later on it got a citrix kb related to that bug.

The XenServer missused it’s SSH connection to the SAN iSCSI hardware, thus limiting how much power on/power off that could be made. Sometime a power on could last stale for 30m, when a SSH session was reused then the power on finished.

A manual script was needed to make it work. I updated the storage unit and the xenserver and the problem went away.

It’s the only bug I encountered while upgrading, except that it was flawless like ESX.

yagmoth555
  • 16,300
  • 4
  • 26
  • 48