coolsport00

coolsport00

@astrugatch At this point, I'd submit your ova to the Vates team as they requested to have them look inside it to verify you're exporting what is needed to be able to import into XO

coolsport00

@olivierlambert I'll ask for an update in the Forums post and see what they say...

coolsport00

@olivierlambert Ok, will do. Thanks!

coolsport00

I used the XO "Import From VMware" tool. I performed this on 3 VMs with no issues encountered during import. But, post-import, there are some as noted in the following:

On 2 Ubuntu VMs, v22.04 and v24.04, I am unable to boot the VM after import because XO assigns the VMs the "secure boot" option. The VMs are not configured for Secure Boot in VMware. I disable this option in VM > Adv tab, reboot and it then boots ok, but this is an issue which should be addressed. Maybe it's only for UEFI-based VMs?

When attempting to install Guest Tools via ISO. I can attach the ISO to the VM, but when I run the "sudo mount /dev/cdrom" cmd, it states "special device /dev/cdrom does not exist".

I then try to eject the ISO and receive an error like "<some character string>/vbd.xvdd does not exist in xenopsd."

The NIC of these imported Linux VMs is down after import...not sure why. I place it "up", but even so...they do not receive an IP address. I imported a Windows 2022 server and it did get an IP address, but it also has the eject ISO error as well.

Any thoughts on how to resolve these issues. If I choose to migrate from VMware,, this would be a huge deterrent to doing so.
Thanks!

coolsport00

@lawrencesystems @olivierlambert
Thought I'd provide an update here...only fair

After getting everything running again, I was able to add 2 physical XCP Hosts to XO and get things going -> create a Pool; create some VMs; test Live Migration (not VDI-based yet); import from VMW (an issue there with Linux); but overall...able to dive into it a bit deeper and see how things in XCP/XO work vs VMW. So far, after getting through my initial issues...I think it's ok

I think my Host2 network issue may have stemmed from attempting to add it back into XO when I was no longer seeing it in the Settings > Servers area after adding it to a Pool. I wasn't aware it would disappear from that area when adding it to a Pool. I don't think the documentation states this (unless I overlooked it? if not, would be helpful I think). Anyway...thanks to all for chiming in!

coolsport00

@gskger Understood.. Thanks for clarifying @gskger

coolsport00

@julienXOvates ah, ok...that makes sense re: vGPU

And that's great to hear about V2V. I wanna say I can't believe Broadcom did that....but yet, that's all they've been doing the past 2yrs is "hosing" their customer base so it's not surprising. Looking fwd to seeing what you all come up with.

coolsport00

Maybe I missed this somewhere...but in XO6 > Quick Actions, is it planned to add a Migration option there? I think that is a needed high action item. I don't see Migrate anywhere in XO6 (yet). BTW, I'm going through all the XO 6.x updates posts. I've not yet finished reading through them, so apologies if it was mentioned in one that I haven't read yet

coolsport00

@poddingue maybe it was this yr? Heck...the days & months just run together on me anymore I'll check that out. Appreciate it!

coolsport00

@poddingue said:
Depends which one you mean

Thanks for the update! I meant the one where the VM was hanging because of incorrect boot order; but, good to know about the other issues. I'm moderately ok on Linux, but not so much so to where I fully understand the long boot time you go into (& divinni in the other thread)

I had an issue in XO-Lite myself last yr. That sounds a bit like I had; or, I believe the issue was BIOS vs UEFI. If I created the VM with BIOS, I could boot/set it up...but not able to with UEFI.

Thanks!

coolsport00

@julienXOvates ah, ok...that makes sense re: vGPU

And that's great to hear about V2V. I wanna say I can't believe Broadcom did that....but yet, that's all they've been doing the past 2yrs is "hosing" their customer base so it's not surprising. Looking fwd to seeing what you all come up with.

coolsport00

@olivierlambert - I'm sure you all (I hope) heard the news Broadcom took down access to its VMware SDDK Toolkit, which of course is a vital part of your V2V Migration tool. That will greatly affect migration ability, or lack thereof, for quite a few potential customers. Are you all in the works for a new migration strategy? I was able to install VDDK on my XO on Sources a while back so I currently have it. But, if I do "pull the trigger" and choose XCP to migrate to for my org, this will be a big deal. And granted, any solution out there has this issue. Just curious of your thoughts on this horrific development from Broadcom....

coolsport00

@julienxovates - you have any "insider info" on when virtual GPU (vGPU) passthrough will be able to be implemented? Not regular GPU passthrough, but virtual...and with NVIDIA. (my preference) I guess I can use some other card (recommendations appreciated) until it is supported. Is that moreso on the Citrix Xen side of your OS, or some other road block?

Second question - when do you all plan to implement V2V in XO6?..specifically V2V from VMW. That would be a nice & strong add-in imo.

Thanks.

coolsport00

@julienXOvates Great, thanks Julien!

coolsport00

Hi Vates Dev folks. I have a suggestion on the XO6 UI - when you click an object in the left navigation pane, then select a view on the right (VMs, Storage, or Network for example), can you make the various column headers sortable? Would be nice to be able to sort column headers when wanting to look for various data in a given view. Thanks!

coolsport00

@tjkreidl Yeah...we have a "DLS" licensing server to license "virtual apps" of connections to the VMs. Not horribly expensive, but another layer of complexity (at times) & of course a nuiscance

I don't know....will be looking into this more. Whether XCP or PVE, at the moment...this is my limitation. We have Cisco Voice VMs. Not sure if you're aware, but those are only supported on VMW, or Cisco's own appliance system. What a crap show! So, we'll have to continue to run a bit of VMW for those even if most of our VMs are migrated to something else. At the very least, I can probably still run my VDI/RDS VMs 1 more additional yr until 2028 until this gets better support.

Thanks for the info & convo

coolsport00

@tjkreidl
hmm...generally, the 15 VMs would take up much more resources than just one Host would be able to disperse. Let me explain...

Currently, with VMW, I have just 5 VMs per ESXi Host, and have 3 physical Hosts, 2 NVIDIA Tesla T4 (a bit legacy now) cards in each Host. I virtually passthrough the underlying cards in each Host to each of the 5 VMs. Not entirely sure how VMW does it architecturally, but VMW disperses the load between the cards amongst the 5 VMs. And maybe that's done in conjunction with the NVIDIA driver installed on ESXi. ‍️Also, the reason I only have 5 VMs per Hosts is because I use them for students to RDP into to run high graphics-need engineering applications (AutoCAD, Revit, inventor Pro). I use Microsoft RDS (really an underrated VDI solution imo) and it "round-robins" the student RDP connections amongh the 15 VMs. I can have up to around 10 RDP connections to each VM. But, according to specs, theoretically I can have around 20 RDP connections. So, as you can see...resources can get tight really quick..thus, only 5 VMs per Host. Anyway, that's what I'm wanting to achieve with XCP. I have a little time...till next summer...to make a decision on what h/v to migrate our VMW VMs off of. My hope is that XCP will be the choice. Ultimately, I'm the one to make the choice, but this would be a definite negative. PVE is my only other option. Not sure they have vGPU passthrough tho either (I have yet to research it).

Thanks for all the info and assist!

coolsport00

Hi @tjkreidl . Thank you for your detailed response, but I don't need/use standard GPU passthrough to 1 VM, but to 15. So I need vGPU capability. From the XCP documentation, it looks like for now, it's not possible/supported due to proprietary issues in the Xen OS, at least with NVIDIA cards, which is what I currently use. I guess I could switch to some other vendor, but would like to stay with what I know. Appreciate it!

coolsport00

@gskger Understood.. Thanks for clarifying @gskger

coolsport00

@gskger that's interesting you are using a NVIDIA GPU. The documentation states, "due to proprietary reasons, currently NVIDIA is not supported".. But that's for vGPU, not just general passthrough. I assume you're using it for straight passthrough to a VM and not to multiple VMs?

I wish this worked for multiple VMs. I'd like to move to XCP from VMW. But, I have till next Summer to decide....

coolsport00

@coolsport00