When I first took a look at XenServer I was dissapointed to find that you cannot PXE boot a VM unless you use the "Other Install Media" Template. However, when you use this template you are not building a fully paravirtualized vm, and you loose some functionality on your vm (like hot adding a virtual disk).
So lets say you want to kickstart a Centos 5 64-bit vm. Traditionally in XenServer, you need to create a new vm based on the "Centos 5 (64-bit)" template and then point your vm to your kickstart media and ks config file. Being that this is a manual process, and I am trying to automate building virtual machines, I started searching for a better way to make Xenserver do what I wanted… I think I may have accomplished my goal.
So the first thing I did was create a new vm via cli. This step spits out a UUID for your new vm.
#xe vm-install template=CentOS\ 5\ \(64-bit\) new-name-label=Centos5.4_Kickstart
Now setup your boot params to point your new vm to your kickstart config file
#xe vm-param-set uuid=0415bc6c-6129-9bc2-26d7-e15625cf85a1 PV-args="ks=http://<my_kickstart_server>/kickstart/ks/centos5-u4_x86_64.cfg ksdevice=eth0"
Then tell your new vm where to find its install DVD.
#xe vm-param-set uuid=6aaf7e10-59e4-9895-9c7b-6eee32eab9f1 other-config:install-repository=http://<my_kickstart_server>/centos5-u4-x86_64/disc1/
Now figure out the UUID of your Kickstart VLAN
#xe network-list
Create a VIF (virtual interface) on your kickstart vlan.
#xe vif-create vm-uuid=0415bc6c-6129-9bc2-26d7-e15625cf85a1 network-uuid=f5a61f5b-f17c-ac40-0995-c41c3a5a3ea3 device=0
Now on the next step i cheated – I used XenCenter to quick create a vm based on my new template.
Now when I create a new vm from this template, it startes to kickstart on boot. My next steps are to create multiple templates, each based on my different kickstart images/configs. Then figure out how to set their ips and hostnames.
Hopefully that post is coming soon.