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OVH [SoYouStart] Configuration

In case you are renting an OVH, Kimsufi or SoYouStart dedicated server, it's pretty easy to get up and running with a Xen server !

With those dedicated servers, you have the opportunity to use a “ready made” installation template that will setup your server in a Citrix XenServer 6.5 (64bits) or Citrix XenServer 7.0.0 (BETA) (no SoftRAID) (64bits) configuration.

It's outside the scope of this article to explain how to install those configurations on your dedicated server, and we'll assume here that you've already managed to have a running Xen Server. In our example we'll be operating on a Citrix XenServer 6.5 (64bits) configuration…

The easiest way to jump start using your Xen Server is to use a management tool.

One of the best available tool at the time of this writing probably is Xen Orchestra, it can be installed in two flavors:

  • XOA - Xen Ochestra Appliance
  • XO - Xen Ochestra from sources

The main difference between those 2 flavors is that XOA is based on paid subscription plans, while XO is totally free, open-source, software. So what's the catch?

  • XOA comes with paid support plans and it can be upgraded right through it's web interface. As one can expect, the level of support plan, as well as the monthly price, defines the options that are accessible in the Web GUI.
  • XOA also offers a Virtual Appliance, that can be easily installed using a command as simple as bash -c “$(curl -s http://xoa.io/deploy)”, to find more about deploying the XOA appliance to your Xen Server, read this page of the XOA documentation
  • XO offers no possibility to upgrade from it's Web GUI.
  • XO requires you to build a VM from scratch.
  • XO has all of the Web GUI options available.

In the following article, we'll go through the steps of installing XO on a fresh Xen Server install.

We'll need a base OS as a host for our XO deployment, you can delve into the details of configuring a Debian base template, or you can use this link to download a pre-configured Debian 8.9 template xva that can be immediately imported into your Xen Server…

We'll be using this Debian 8.9 template in the following example.

We could use the CLI to execute all the following commands, but since this tutorial is aimed at keeping things simple we'll first use a GUI application to access our Xen Server.

When it comes to Xen GUI applications, there are roughly only two choices available:

  • Install XenCenter (Windows only), by typing your Xen Server IP into a Web Browser, you'll see a link to download the XenCenterSetup.exe
  • Install OpenXenManager, which is a (python) multiplatform implementation of XenCenter…