Adding Storage to Citrix Xenserver 5.6

Xenserver is a great virtualisation platform to run either as a standalone installation for a lab or branch office or as part of a pool of xenservers for larger scale virtualization projects. To leverage much of the fun stuff that xenserver can do (xenmotion, HA etc) your vm’s must reside on shared storage. BTW Xenmotion is available in the free edition of xenserver as well so that is great news for all those home labs out there. You should add storage at the pool level rather than to each individual server in the pool, for one thing its less clicks and another xenserver will moan when it detects multiple connections.   Right click on the pool and select “New Storage”               Now if you are adding storage for a home lab or small sRead More…

Active Directory Sites and Services Tutorial 2k8 R2

Active Directory Sites and Services allows you to create a logical outline of your physical sites and links. Much the same as AD users and computers allows you to create a logical structure of you users and computers objects etc. Sites and Services also allows you to map and control active directory replication which is great for replicating to sites that maybe are not quite so well connected as others. This allows you to design active directory around physical boundaries and challenges such as a slow wan link to a branch office or even {shudder} a dial up link that is only connected irregularly. By default when you create a new root forest a site is created within sites and services (helpfully named DEFAULTFIRSTSITE) and all domain controllers are added to the to the default first site. Read More…