XCP-ng 8.0.0 Beta now available!

AllooTikeeChaat

Folks... was at Citrix event today and the morning was a talk by LoginVSI looking at the impact of the latest security patches for Intel CPU's and the performance impact server on EUC work loads and server scalebility on the Hypervisors. According to the presenter all the Hypervisors (Hyper-V, VMware ESX and XenServer) that they were testing were seeing approx 20-25% decrease in performance when using Intel based systems. What I found interesting was VMware has developed a new scheduler, SCAv2 to help reduce the impact although no numbers where mentioned. There was no mention of anything of th sort for XenServer or HyperV.

https://blogs.vmware.com/performance/2019/05/new-scheduler-option-for-vsphere-6-7-u2.html

According to that blog post .. the impact using the SCAv2 was reduced to 11%.

olivierlambert

This will come in Xen. In fact, work already started. It's called "core scheduling", and this is the preliminary work before sync scheduling, which is a perfect solution (better perfs AND better security) against Intel CPU flaws.

Source: https://lists.xenproject.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2019-05/msg00370.html

AllooTikeeChaat

@olivierlambert

Good to know that they're already working on it for Xen. Surprised that none of the Citrix bod's at the event mentioned it. Looks like the best way to do get around the massive performance hit without switching to AMD !

olivierlambert

@AllooTikeeChaat I'm always stunned by the fact Citrix communication on Xen is equal to /dev/null, despite all the great efforts made by the Xen devs (half of them are from Citrix!)

So as I said, it's not there yet, but it's going into that direction pretty well, I would expect this stuff to be backported in the future I suppose, because it's really powerful!

dariosplit

When will the final version of XCP-ng 8.0.0. be available?

olivierlambert

This will depend a bit on community feedback: more feedback means faster release

s_mcleod

@olivierlambert I’m sorry I’m not more available to bring more testing to the table this week, I am AFK.

olivierlambert

No worries mate! To give a more precise answer, we might target a RC for the end of the month, maybe sooner, IDK yet.

Then if there is no big issue spotted with the RC, release will come near after

peder

Connecting an iSCSI SR in xsconsole fails if there's a discovery password.
It works if I disable the authentication.

It works in XenOrchestra if I attach it as a new SR (With auth) AND have the same discovery username and password in the ACL of the iqn.
That still doesn't work in xsconsole.

My iscsi server uses targetcli-fb/LIO.

olivierlambert

Is it something broken before? Because I don't think we ever touched xsconsole outside colors

s_mcleod

I’ve fairly certain I’ve had this problem since xenserver 6.x

olivierlambert

Okay so this issue could be opened somewhere, but IMHO it shouldn't be a blocker for the release

peder

I used tgt and no authentication before so I can't say.
I decided to try targetcli and authentication when I installed 8 beta.

No, it's probably not a blocker.

apayne

@olivierlambert Go figure - just two days after that posting, my creaky old HP DL365 Gen1 up and died. CPU 1 memory bank shows a solid set of lights for RAM sockets, i.e. the memory controller can't access RAM. Bummer.

My wife took pity on me - or got me a father's day gift, depending on your point of view - and sprung for a Dell R815, which is supported. Of course, I gave the 8.0 beta a spin.

Installation was slightly faster, but there have been a few minor quirks along the way:

The USB key I stuck into the unit wasn't an option for the OS install, but did show up as an option when creating storage for VMs. No big deal, but still kinda strange.
Peeking at a different console via Alt-F2 and Alt-F3 showed some patches? And the kernel/dracut root/boot installation section took a loooong time to complete; everything else flew by. If it's downloading those patches that would explain the delay - the unit has a slow wifi bridge connection.

Other than those, it seems fine. I'm still poking around it, getting a few for what's changed.

stormi

@apayne I'm not aware of the installer being able to download patches from the internet. Can you create a tarball of /var/log/installer and make it available to me so that I check that?

Not being able to install the system on usb key is a good thing: it is not recommended because it would wear out too quickly due to frequent writes.

borzel

@apayne For USB-Key see our FAQ: https://github.com/xcp-ng/xcp/wiki/FAQ#can-i-use-xcp-ng-on-a-usb-stick-like-esxi

donald_hodges

@stormi

Xen Orchestra is not letting me log in after deploying with the Quick Deploy. Always returns "invalid credentials". I have attempted to quick deploy a number of times with different usernames and passwords but no joy. As I am just kicking the tires I did not created an account on xen-orchestra.com so I left those fields empty, not sure if this would make a difference.

olivierlambert

Please yum update before, we fixed some stuff regarding that.

cg

@apayne said in XCP-ng 8.0.0 Beta now available!:

@DustinB said in XCP-ng 8.0.0 Beta now available!:
[...] Citrix just waved their hands and said "these don't work anymore".

As for so many other people: Start reading and understand what you read.
It's not said that they don't work anymore, what they say is: They don't care if any THESE CPU/PLATFORM RELATED PROBLEMS occure. They might try but will give up rather soon, as it's called "best effort".

And a pretty good, understandable, reason is: Vendors don't help anymore, means in case something's wrong on that and you need their support, because you promised customers, that you support that... guess what?
Solution: Drop it!

I'm sure you could get support forever - if you pay the right amount.
Otherwise: Somewhen it's time to replace old stuff and buy new(er), way less energy consuming, hardware.

And why paying for Hyper-V? It's free, like the smallest version of VMware is. Most people and small companies are pretty fine with what their limits. Don't get me wrong: If XCP-ng continues the roadmap, I see a good chance to beat them up.

You should way more read about all of that, than yelling and complaining at/about Citrix or XCP-ng.

Edit:
"We still have the experimental ZFS support and zfs packages have been updated to 0.7.13. The known limitations (no VDI export...) remain for now."
As you posted it's on 0.8.0 now, you should update the startpost.
Also IIRC you said migration/export is still not supported with ext4/zfs etc. - when (or for what/when) will that change?
Do backup tools need to know about ext4... and/or does it make any difference for them, or is it just interally, so it's like as if nothing ever changed?

olivierlambert

ZFS in XCP-ng 8.0 is fully functional. Migration/export/backup, everything is working.