Instructions for Linux VMs
Xen Guest Tools, also known as XenServer VM tools, are needed to enable live migration and clean shutdown of your VM. Xen tools are also required in order for dynamic CPU and RAM scaling to work.
These tools provide your VM with the capability to “live migrate” between back-end hypervisors on the M5 Cloud platform. This means that your VM can be safely migrated to another back-end hypervisor, with no interruption to you, during our maintenance windows or during certain failure conditions. Ensuring that all VMs that run on the M5 Cloud are capable of live migration is a key principle of the M5 Cloud. It’s better for our customers and it’s better for us.
Linux already comes with the required drivers but needs the management agent. The agent comes either as a systemd or as a sysvinit service, depending on the Linux distribution. The service is usually named xe-linux-distribution.
Guest Tools can be installed from the target distribution’s online repositories if available,
or from the Guest Tools ISO image that can be attached to any VM.
First check to verify if the service is already running:
$ sudo systemctl status xe-linux-distribution.service
To check if the package is installed for Red Hat based systems:
# dnf list –installed xe-guest-utilities
For debian and Ubuntu:
# apt list –installed xe-guest-utilities
To install from a distro’s online repo you may need to first enable the appropriate repository, then you can install the package from it and enable the service.
Installing guest tools for CentOS and Fedora:
Enable the EPEL repository in the VM. Instructions to enable the EPEL repository (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux ) are available at:
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/epel/#_quickstart
Then,
# yum install xe-guest-utilities-latest
The service is not enabled by default, so enable it and start it:
# systemctl enable xe-linux-distribution
# systemctl start xe-linux-distribution
For debian and Ubuntu:
# apt install xe-guest-utilities
If you run into any issues or need to install the Guest Tools using the other method of the guest tools ISO please reach out to us. Thank you!
Instructions for FreeBSD VMs
Xen Guest tools, also known as XenServer VM tools, are needed to enable live migration and clean shutdown of your VM. Xen tools are also required in order for dynamic CPU and RAM scaling to work.
These tools provide your VM with the capability to “live migrate” between back-end hypervisors on the M5 Cloud platform. This means that your VM can be safely migrated to another back-end hypervisor, with no interruption to you, during our maintenance windows or during certain failure conditions. Ensuring that all VMs that run on the M5 Cloud are capable of live migration is a key principle of the M5 Cloud. It’s better for our customers and it’s better for us.
For FreeBSD the Xen kernel modules are built and distributed in the GENERIC kernel. The drivers will be present if you haven’t installed a custom kernel or recompiled your kernel.
To communicate with the hypervisor, you need to install two packages, xen-guest-tools and xe-guest-utilities. Or if you choose to use ports instead: sysutils/xe-guest-utilities and sysutils/xen-guest-tools.
If you already have the xen guest tools installed and running, xe-daemon will be in your processes. You can check by running:
# service xenguest status
To manually install the packages run:
# pkg install xen-guest-tools xe-guest-utilities
# service xenguest start
By default the xe-daemon will run if FreeBSD detects the Xen hypervisor at boot.
If you run into any issues please reach out to us. Thank you!
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