Download Citrix XenServer 5.0 Update 3

Citrix has for its virtualization environment XenServer released an update with 5.0 Update 3 as the version designation. This virtualization environment is based on Xen and adds useful tools to expand the possibilities and make management easier. This update mainly fixes the license change that was implemented at the end of February announced implemented. The list of customizations looks like this:

Version 5.0 Update 3:

This update enables the new license entitlements that have been recently announced. This includes pooling and shared storage being made available to customers of the Free edition of XenServer. Existing customers who have purchased a XenServer license will automatically be upgraded to the new Citrix Essentials for XenServer entitlements, which includes all the features you were previously entitled to. If you are running a Free version of XenServer, you will be asked to activate your license within 30 days, and then once every 12 months.

Version 5.0 Update 2:

Networking and HA:

• CA-25162 – It is no longer possible to create a VLAN that has an untagged VLAN PIF as its tagged PIF (representing a state within the API that does not match a possible networking configuration). Applying this update automatically corrects this problem by moving the higher-level VLANs onto the base tagged PIF.
• CA-25440 – The memory-target field for the control domain was reverting to the default value when joining a pool. For users who had increased this value (on some specialized systems, or where instructed by support), the value needs to be re-set if the server has subsequently been joined to a pool.
• CA-24772, CA-25684 – In cases where the xapi management agent had been restarted on a pool master, the virtual machines now correctly report their memory usage, and the memory usage calculation showing free memory and used by Xen in XenCenter is now accurate . In addition, pool member servers will now correctly report their online status to XenCenter in a timely fashion when the pool master server is restarted and HA is enabled.
• CA-25273 – The system is now more proactive regarding warning about error conditions when enabling HA. In particular, a new error message will be raised if a network interface marked as disallow-unplug has not yet been plugged in. You may also receive a warning if you have provided IP information for a network interface (PIF) but have not set disallow-unplug (which may result in the interface not being brought up at startup, potentially preventing access to the storage used by HA) . These conditions should not affect users who have configured their networking using XenCenter.
• CA-25225 – An issue where network interfaces are unnecessarily brought down and up when the control domain is restarted has been resolved, improving the HA behavior in this scenario.
• CA-25255 – A networking issue that could potentially cause a server to crash under high load (particularly network or storage load) has been resolved.

Storage:

• CA-25753 – An issue where creating a snapshot manually on a Dell Equallogic array could cause a XenServer using that array to create and not destroy SSH sessions to the array until no further SSH sessions can be created, has been resolved.
• CA-21498 – XenServer can now connect to updated NetApp filers running ONTAP 7.3 and later.

Virtual Machine and OS compatibility:

• CA-25643 – Due to an incompatibility with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and CentOS version 4 kernels on Intel Nehalem processors, a suppress-spurious-page-faults option has been added as an other-config field for VMs. This causes these kernels to run correctly on the new Intel Nehalem processor and chipset, making it possible to install an updated kernel. An updated kernel that has this issue resolved is available at or from the Update 2 download page. Remove the option from the VM once you have installed the updated kernel using the following CLI command:
  xe vm-param-remove uuid= \
  param-name=other-config param-key=suppress-spurious-page-faults
  The continued presence of the key can result in a minor performance overhead.
• CA-23182 – Issues with timing (for example, where the system clock may move too quickly) seen on Windows Server 2008 have been resolved. This addresses potential compatibility issues with applications on this operating system.

stability:

• This update includes the latest stability fixes available.