Citrix Systems 5.6 manual Creating networks in resource pools, Creating VLANs

•use an internal network

•support advanced operations such as VLANs or NIC bonding

To add or remove networks using XenCenter, refer to the XenCenter online Help.

To add a new network using the CLI

1.Open the XenServer host text console.

2.Create the network with the network-create command, which returns the UUID of the newly created network:

xe network-create name-label=<mynetwork>

At this point the network is not connected to a PIF and therefore is internal.

Creating networks in resource pools

All XenServer hosts in a resource pool should have the same number of physical network interface cards (NICs), although this requirement is not strictly enforced when a XenServer host is joined to a pool.

Having the same physical networking configuration for XenServer hosts within a pool is important because all hosts in a pool share a common set of XenServer networks. PIFs on the individual hosts are connected to pool-wide networks based on device name. For example, all XenServer hosts in a pool with an eth0 NIC will have a corresponding PIF plugged into the pool-wide Network 0 network. The same will be true for hosts with eth1 NICs and Network 1, as well as other NICs present in at least one XenServer host in the pool.

If one XenServer host has a different number of NICs than other hosts in the pool, complications can arise because not all pool networks will be valid for all pool hosts. For example, if hosts host1 and host2 are in the same pool and host1 has four NICs while host2 only has two, only the networks connected to PIFs corresponding to eth0 and eth1 will be valid on host2. VMs on host1 with VIFs connected to networks corresponding to eth2 and eth3 will not be able to migrate to host host2.

All NICs of all XenServer hosts within a resource pool must be configured with the same MTU size.

Creating VLANs

For servers in a resource pool, you can use the pool-vlan-createcommand. This command creates the VLAN and automatically creates and plugs in the required PIFs on the hosts in the pool. See the section called “pool-vlan-create”for more information.

To connect a network to an external VLAN using the CLI

1.Open the XenServer host text console.

2.Create a new network for use with the VLAN. The UUID of the new network is returned:

xe network-create name-label=network5

3.Use the pif-listcommand to find the UUID of the PIF corresponding to the physical NIC supporting the desired VLAN tag. The UUIDs and device names of all PIFs are returned, including any existing VLANs:

xe pif-list

4.Create a VLAN object specifying the desired physical PIF and VLAN tag on all VMs to be connected to the new VLAN. A new PIF will be created and plugged into the specified network. The UUID of the new PIF object is returned.

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