XCP-ng 8.0.0 Release Candidate

janvs0

Upgrade from Citrix XenServer 6.5 > Citrix XenServer 7.6 > XCP-ng 8.0.0 with prefinal .iso went smooth without any problem on a 3 box pool. Moved to the "new" partition scheme from XS6.5 -> XS7.6 and used the prepare_host_upgrade.py (rolling pool) method. Had no issues migrating the existing VM's upward.

Perhaps it would've been possible to go from XS6.5 straight to XCP-ng 8.0.0 (after applying hotfix RPU002) but since this is a production cluster I didn't want to make it too risky (yes, I know this is not quite final yet).

//edit: Forgot to mention these are Dell PowerEdge R720s on Intel E5 2660's using FC storage.

Thanks XCP-ng team!

mike

Quick (hopefully not dumb) question: Will XCP-ng 8.0 support VDIs larger than 2TB? I see mention of the qcow2 format dotted around but nothing concrete about if/when it will be implemented. Cheers.

olivierlambert

I wouldn't consider SMAPIv3 production ready yet. Our first objective would be exporting qcow2 files to be able to backup those (so if you have an issue, at least you have backups!)

Surprisingly (or not ) Citrix didn't planned any way to export VM disk in the format they chose themselves (qcow2)

So now @ronan-a is working on integrating that into SMAPIv3. As soon it's done (a PoC should be around this summer), we'll try to publish various "drivers" (ZFS, ext4, xfs, NFS) for people who want to experiment, with also a PoC in Xen Orchestra to be able to "save"/backup those QCOW2 files.

mike

@olivierlambert Thanks for the super-quick reply as usual! I feel like I should make a new thread for it, but what are you views on using raw VDIs to get around the limit? http://www.ervik.as/how-to-create-a-raw-logical-volume-manager-virtual-disk-infrastructure-with-xenserver/

I realise you can't snapshot raw disks, but are there any other pitfalls to it?

olivierlambert

Doing hat is like plugin a disk directly to the VM, you'll lose all virtualization flexibility:

no snapshot
no backup
no migration

So do that in last resort, if you can't avoid a 2TiB disk or you can't afford a NAS.

Hans

This post is deleted!

Hans

@ajmind Did you get the Windows XP up and running with any XenTools? I was able to live migrate from 7.2 to 8.0 with XP still running, but it wont boot after shutdown.

ajmind

@Hans
No, it was not successful, except to boot the VM in safe mode and to remove the Xentools and drivers via the Software Control Panel. However, this has left the VM unusable and the activation was also lost.

ruskofd

I think there is typo concerning UEFI. It seems only available for Windows guest only.

From Citrix :

olivierlambert

You don't have this limitation in Xen Orchestra. I suppose Citrix didn't test it for other distro, but I'm running Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on it without issues.

Again, I would recommend XO as main client for XCP-ng

ruskofd

Oh nice ! I didn't tested it that's why, glad to hear that !
I use XO only too, but for fresh setup installation, I use XCP-ng Center (for XO from sources).

borzel

anyone can request a change in https://github.com/xcp-ng/xenadmin/issues