Citrix XenServer 6.1 – XenServer Tools out of date (version 6.0 installed)

Recently we upgraded our XenServer resource pool to 6.1 because the new feature allowing you to do live migration of VDI’s sounds unreal.  I still get amazed that this stuff works, well most of the time.  Now we are having issues with XenTools reporting to be out of date in XenCenter, I see the message:

XenServer Tools out of date (version 6.0 installed)

Great, I’ll just pop the XenTools CD in, uninstall the old version, and install the new version.  Nope, that does not work.  Instead it makes the issues worst, as you try and reboot the system but XenServer never figures out the server is shutdown and you end up having to do vm-reset-powerstate or even destroy the domain.  Either way this sucks.

Citrix just updated it’s XenServer blog yesterday acknowledging the issues with XenTools is real and they will try and fix their processes.  And they are right, this sort of thing really does hurt your confidence in the system.  And we all know virtualization is built on confidence.

Now here is the real place to get all the info on what needs to happen.  It’s a two part update, first you need to apply hot fix XS61E009 and then XS61E010.  Then you have the fun of updating XenTools.  But lots of work non the less when you have 10s, 100s, 1000s of VMs.

http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX135099
http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX136252
http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX136253

*UPDATE*

If you run in to blue screen on Windows while installing the new XenTools from the XS61E010… I know more issues??  If you can get into safe mode to remove xentools from the machine and reinstall, that may work.  Other wise you can try looking yup your VMs UUID and changing the device ID.  This may work if your VM does not get the correct device ID set during the new xentools install. Use this command:

xe vm-param-set uuid=<vm_uuid> platform:device_id=0001

or

xe vm-param-set uuid=<vm_uuid> platform:device_id=0002