Adding a hard disk drive to Citrix XenServer

Adding new hard disk drive in XenServer is different from the traditional Linux process. For XenServer, you need to create a container that is called a "storage repository" to define a particular storage target (such as a hard disk). This container is where virtual disk images (VDIs) of VMs are stored. A VDI is an abstracted storage space that acts as the hard disk for VMs.

Xen storage repository supports IDE, SATA, SCSI, and SAS drives when locally connected, apart from iSCSI, NFS, SAS, and Fibre Channel for remote storage.

Creating a storage repository in a XenServer

Use the following steps to create a storage repository in a XenServer.

SSH to the XenServer as root.
Find the disk ID of the new device by using the following command:
```
# cat /proc/partitions
```
The command lists of all the HDDs and partitions. Find your new local disk, which is probably “sdx” (most probably sdb) or '/cciss/c0d1p0'. Use the following command to list the disk IDs for all the partitions and or HDDs that are in the server.
```
# ll /dev/disk/by-id
```
Find the disk ID of the “sdx” or 'cciss/c0d1'disk. The “scsi-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx” or “cciss-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx” format is what you need.
Find the host-uuid in a XenServer by using the following command:
```
#xe host-list
```
The uuid (RO) is the 'host-uuid' that you need.

Create a Storage Repository (SR):

The sr-create command is for adding a new hard disk drive. Creating a hard disk drive is a destructive process that partitions and formats the drive, and any data on the drive is lost. If you want to reintroduce a drive that has existing data, use sr-introduce.

# xe sr-create content-type=user device-config:device=/dev/disk/by-id/ host-uuid= name-label=”Local Storage 2” shared=false type=lvm

- Or

# xe sr-create content-type=user device-config:device=/dev/disk/by-id/ host-uuid= name-label=”Local Storage 2” shared=false type=lvm

- Or

# xe sr-create content-type=user device-config:device=/dev/ host-uuid= name-label=”Local Storage 2” shared=false type=lvm

Verifying the storage repository in XenCenter

You can verify the storage repository from XenCenter by usig the following steps.

Connect to XenCenter.
Go to Storage to find the details of all storage repositories. You can see the storage 'Local Storage2' in the list that shows that the disk is added. Now you can start creating VDIs on it.