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XenCenter
2024 8.2.7
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Change Pool Properties

August 6, 2024
Contributed by: 
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Select any resource pool in the Resources pane and select the General tab to see its properties and status. Click Properties on the General tab to change the properties of a pool.

Edit Properties icon - a gray square with lines in it. General properties - name, description, folder, tags

On the General Properties tab you can change the pool’s name and description, place it in a folder, and manage its tags.

  • To change the pool name, enter a new name in the Name box.
  • To change its description, enter new text in the Description box.
  • To add the pool to a folder or to move it to a different folder, select Change in the Folder box. Choose a folder. For more information, see Using folders.
  • To tag and untag the pool and to create and delete tags, see Using tags.

Fields icon Custom fields

Custom fields allow you to add information to managed resources to make it easier to search and organize them. See Using custom fields to find out how to assign custom fields to your managed resources.

Email icon Email options

Use this tab to configure the email notification for system alerts that are generated on any servers or VMs in the pool. For more information, see XenCenter Alerts. Users who want to receive performance alert emails can choose the preferred language from the list. The languages available are English, Chinese, and Japanese.

The default language for configuring performance alert email language for XenCenter is English.

Power on icon - a green circle with a power icon overlaid in white. Power on

The Power On feature allows you to configure power management preferences for servers that support power management. Servers can be powered off and on automatically depending on the pool’s total workload (through Workload Balancing).

  • In the list of servers at the top of the tab, select the servers for which you want to configure power management.
  • Under Power On mode, specify the Power On settings (Disabled, Wake-on-LAN, DRAC, IPMI or custom script) for the selected servers. The available power on settings depend on the version of your hosts.
  • Under Configuration options, specify either the IP address and credentials or key-value pairs for a host power-on script. The options you must specify depend on the Power On mode option you chose.

For more information about prerequisites and configuration options for the Host Power On feature, see Configuring Host Power On.

GPU icon GPU

This tab allows you to set a pool-wide policy to assign VMs to available GPUs to achieve either maximum density or maximum performance. Select an option based on your requirements.

The GPU tab displays Mixed setting only when different settings are used for different GPU groups. That is, when you configure certain GPU groups within a pool for maximum density, and configure the other GPU groups for maximum performance. It is not possible to set or edit the Mixed setting using XenCenter. To use different settings for different GPU groups, use the xe CLI.

Note:

GPU Virtualization is available for XenServer Premium Edition customers. XenCenter displays the GPU tab when the pool meets the license requirements and also has GPUs that support various virtual GPU types. For more information, see About XenServer Licensing.

Security icon - a padlock. Security

The Security tab enables you to specify whether TCP port 80 is open or closed for the management interface of the pool. We recommend that this port is closed.

The Security tab enables you to specify a security protocol to use for communication with the pool.

  • TLS 1.2 only: This option accepts communication from Management API clients and appliances (including third-party appliances) that can communicate with the XenServer pool using the TLS 1.2 protocol. The TLS 1.2 only option uses the following cipher suites:

  • TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA384 (Citrix Hypervisor 8.2 and later)
  • TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 (Citrix Hypervisor 8.2 and later)
  • TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA256 (Citrix Hypervisor 8.2 and later)

  • TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256

    Important:

    Ensure that all Management API clients and appliances that communicate with the XenServer pool are compatible with TLS 1.2 before choosing this option.

    In Citrix Hypervisor 8.2 and later, this option is the only option provided.

Live patching icon Live patching

This tab allows you to enable or disable live patching. Live patching enables customers to install some Linux kernel and Xen hypervisor updates without having to reboot the hosts. It is enabled by default.

Note:

XenServer Live Patching is available for XenServer Premium Edition customers. For more information about licensing, see About XenServer Licensing.

Network icon Network

This tab allows you to enable or disable IGMP snooping. XenServer sends multicast traffic to all guest VMs. This behavior leads to unnecessary load on host devices by requiring them to process packets they have not solicited. If you enable IGMP snooping, it prevents hosts on a local network from receiving traffic for a multicast group that they have not explicitly joined. This action improves the performance of multicast. IGMP snooping is especially useful for bandwidth-intensive IP multicast applications such as IPTV. This option is disabled by default.

Note:

  • IGMP snooping is available only when the network back-end uses Open vSwitch.
  • When enabling this feature on a pool, it might also be necessary to enable IGMP querier on one of the physical switches. Or else, multicast in the sub network falls back to broadcast and can decrease XenServer performance.
  • When enabling this feature on a pool running IGMP v3, VM migration or network bond failover results in IGMP version switching to v2.
  • XenServer IGMP snooping is available for XenServer Premium Edition customers. For more information about licensing, see About XenServer Licensing.

Clustering icon Clustering

This tab allows you to enable or disable clustering. Enable clustering on a pool to use thin-provisioned storage repositories with GFS2.

Note:

We recommend that you apply clustering only on pools that contain three or more servers and a GFS2 SR.

Do not enable clustering on pools that don’t include a GFS2 SR.

When enabling this feature on a pool, specify a network. The clustering mechanism uses this network to communicate with all servers in the pool. If a server cannot communicate with most other servers in the clustered pool, after a timeout that server self-fences. To decrease the chance of a host self-fencing unnecessarily, ensure the network you use for clustering is reliable. Citrix recommends you use a physically separate bonded network. For more information, see Add a new network.

Advanced icon Advanced

This tab allows you to configure advanced options for a pool.

During the live migration of a VM, its memory is transferred as a data stream between two hosts using the network. You can compress this data stream and speed up the memory transfer on slow networks by enabling the migration stream compression feature. To enable the migration stream compression feature, select the Compress VM memory and vGPU data during VM live migration checkbox. This feature is disabled by default.

NRPE icon NRPE

Note:

The NRPE feature is available for XenServer Premium or Trial Edition customers. For more information about XenServer licensing, see Licensing. To upgrade, or to get a XenServer license, visit the XenServer website.

This tab allows you to configure the NRPE service for a pool.

The NRPE tab displays the default NRPE configuration values for your pool. Users with the Pool Admin role can use any third-party monitoring tool that supports the Nagios Remote Plugin Executor (NRPE) to monitor resources consumed by your XenServer host and dom0 - the control domain of your host. For information about the host and dom0 metrics that you can capture by using NRPE, see Monitor host and dom0 resources with NRPE.

Select the Enable NRPE check box to enable NRPE for your pool. To add more monitoring servers that are allowed to talk to the NRPE daemon, specify the hosts as a comma-delimited list of IP addresses or host names. You can also adjust the warning and critical thresholds of the plugin checks by modifying the values in the warning and critical thresholds table. For more information on how to configure the NRPE service, see Monitoring host and dom0 resources with NRPE.

Note:

The NRPE tab is only available to users with the Pool Admin role.

SNMP icon SNMP

Note:

The SNMP feature is available for XenServer Premium or Trial Edition customers. For more information about XenServer licensing, see Licensing. To upgrade, or to get a XenServer license, visit the XenServer website.

This tab allows you to configure the SNMP service for a pool.

The SNMP tab displays the default SNMP configuration values for your pool. With the Pool Admin role, you can use SNMP to remotely monitor resources consumed by your XenServer host and dom0 - the control domain of your host.

Select the Enable SNMP check box to enable SNMP for your standalone host. You can add one trap receiver by clicking Add Trap Receiver. For more information on how to configure the SNMP service, see Monitoring host and dom0 resources with SNMP.

Note:

The SNMP tab is only available to users with the Pool Admin role.

If you cannot see the SNMP tab in XenCenter, it might be because a member of the pool is not running a version of XenServer that supports SNMP. Update all members in the pool to the latest version of XenServer.

Change Pool Properties
August 6, 2024
Contributed by: 
X
August 6, 2024
Contributed by: 
X

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