Important Note:
Since these were Rackspace servers – the default repository that they connect to does not have the xen kernel packages and xen software on them. We had to call and have Rackspace add the capability of using certain commands like “yum install xen”
Step 1.1:Install the xen kernel and xen.
[powershell]
# yum –disableexcludes=all install kernel-xen xen
[/powershell]
Step 1.2: Reboot
[powershell]# reboot[/powershell]
Step 1.3:Ensure the new kernel loaded. You should see xen after the kernel version:
[powershell]# uname –a[/powershell]
Linux web1.myhostname.com 2.6.18-238.9.1.el5xen #1 SMP Fri Mar 18 12:53:42 EDT 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
Step 1.4:Ensure xen is running on boot.
[powershell]# xm list
Name ID Mem(MiB) VCPUs State Time(s)
Domain-0 0 7989 8 r—– 6268.9
[/powershell]
Congrats the host machine is setup!
Step 2: Let’s setup a CentOS virtual machine. Virt-install:
[powershell]# virt-install -–prompt[/powershell]
[powershell]What is the name of your virtual machine? mnode1
How much RAM should be allocated (in megabytes)? 8024
What would you like to use as the disk (file path)? /home/xen/mnode1
How large would you like the disk (/home/xen/mnode1) to be (in gigabytes)? 100
What is the install URL? http://mirror.cogentco.com/pub/linux/centos/5.6/os/x86_64/
Starting install...
Retrieving file .treeinfo… | 417 B 00:00
Retrieving file vmlinuz… | 2.1 MB 00:01
Retrieving file initrd.img… | 7.9 MB 00:03
Creating storage file… | 100 GB 00:00
Creating domain… | 0 B 00:05
error: Failed to get local hostname
[/powershell]
[powershell]Domain installation still in progress. You can reconnect to
the console to complete the installation process.[/powershell]
Step 4:At this point you need to connect to the virtual machines “console” to continue.
[powershell]# xm console <hostname>[/powershell]
Step 5:Go through the centos install…..I’ll omit this process. But in short you WILL need to know the ip address, subnet, and gateway of your server.