XCP-ng 8.3 public alpha 🚀

ashceryth

Has anyone tried installing 8.3 on a NUC12 yet? I'm about to buy a (maybe 2) NUC12 i5 (1240P) to replace my old tower servers at home. How does XCP-ng handle the hybrid architecture?

andSmv

@ashceryth XCP-ng is based on Xen 4.13, so I'm quite sure it doesn't handle Intel Hybrid architecture. I'm not even sure there's ongoing efforts on this support in Xen Project Community.

Moreover, after a very quick check, I didn't see the trace of ARM big.LITTLE support in recent XEN.

I think this kind of features needs the profound analysis how exactly is to be mapped on hypervisor based platforms. And I think the response is not obvious at all.

olivierlambert

Yes, it will simply explode if you have both cores types enabled at the same time. You will need to disable E or P cores (your choice).

The main reason is a really poor design choice from Intel, with those cores designed with similar functions doing different things. Nobody in the virt world want to deal with those.

ashceryth

Thanks, for your comments! That is basically what I was expecting.

exetico

@mdavico Saly, I also get a VM_HAS_VUSBS(OpaqueRef:***/removed/**) error message in 8.3, if I have a ongoing passthrough.

I'm not sure if it's the same thing with backups. If it is, that's problematic. One of my instances needs the USB Passthrough, but I need the rolling backup.

mdavico

@exetico tested with virtualbox and it is possible to take a snapshot with VUSB

MrJroen

@ashceryth I installed the alpha version (8.3) on a Intel RNUC12WSKI70000 a few months ago without any issue. Worked like a charm, no custom mods needed. When the official 8.3 release is available I will reinstall from scratch just to make sure its still compatible/working.
Better to use the supported hardware of course but I like the sizes of the NUC's

Edit: I need to look into the hybrid part of the question. I'm not familiar with this at the moment so not sure what the implications are from that standpoint. Anyway, seems like the experts above already provided an answer on this one.

stormi

A new batch of updates for XCP-ng 8.3 alpha arrived.

It's been a while: one specific update I wanted to push together with everything that was ready gave us more trouble than expected, but now it's solved and so I pushed all the updates at once.

Main changes

xcp-ng-release*: updated repository definitions in /etc/yum.repos.d/xcpng.repo, to add more testing repositories (disabled by default. More about this here - look for "About the new testing repositories"). Warning: If you have any local changes to this file, it won't be overwritten. In this case, look for /etc/yum.repos.d/xcpng.repo.rpmnew after applying the update, and move it over xcpng.repo. This won't change much for you as testers of XCP-ng 8.3, because we're still pushing the updates directly to xcp-ng-base when they are ready for your testing, but there might be the occasional experimental package in some other location - and the updated .repo file with make it easier to pull from there if needed.
AMD and Intel microcode updates (not the very latest yet, though)
sm (Storage Manager) ported to python 3 by XenServer, and we rebased our additional storage drivers on it
XAPI and related components
- HTTP to HTTPS redirection on the host's web page.
- lots of changes from upstream. Full changelog.
IPv6 support added to xha and xsconsole. You'll need to wait for an updated installer in order to test this and the rest of IPv6 support for the management interface.
memtest86+ updated to 6.20 to support EFI hosts and more hardware. Will be available in the installer.
xen: better hardware support (Ryzen...), security fixes, bug fixes...
Other updates synced from the preview release of XenServer 8.3.
zstd 1.5.4 (1.5.5 soon)
removed corosync and dlm from installed systems. They were unneeded dependencies for XenServer's clustering support, which is proprietary and thus unsupported on XCP-ng. Let's trim dom0 down slightly.

We also continued our work on the installer and on automating the build of installer ISO images. We'll have new builds for you shortly.

How to update

From an installed XCP-ng 8.3 alpha, just run yum update, and reboot. The usual update rules apply: master host first, etc. Check https://xcp-ng.org/docs/updates.html. I haven't tested it on this update, but XOA's Rolling Pool Update should work on this update.

What to test

Depending on the time available, it goes from "just update and check things still work as expected" to "test everything you can think of", with an intermediate step of "test specific features which are important to you".

exetico

@stormi Thank you!

Are there any planned work related to hot backups of VM's, where a USB device are attached? It's currently not possible.

In the weekend I ended up moving a single container to a alpine image, so I could continue backing up my primary docker VM. But I was hoping to have rolling backup of the alpine VM, too

https://xcp-ng.org/forum/post/61091

rRobbie

@stormi

Update done on an Intel NUC11ATKC4 and a NUC8i5BEH, both are working fine

stormi

@exetico The topic of snapshots (and subsequently, backups) for VMs with USB passthrough is an identified one but there's no ETA at the moment.

exetico

@stormi Fair. Are there any public issue to follow? Maybe I didn't do my search that well? Thank you for the answer.

stormi

@exetico There are https://github.com/xcp-ng/xcp/issues/164 at XCP-ng level and https://github.com/xapi-project/xen-api/issues/4573 at upstream XAPI level.

ghost created this issue in xcp-ng/xcp

open Enable snapshots for VM with vUSB/USB passthrough #164

ghost created this issue in xapi-project/xen-api

open Backup fails if VM has a USB pass through #4573

JeffBerntsen

@stormi Update done on the 8.3 server in my test lab and all goes well so far. HP Microserver N36L

exetico

@stormi Thanks. I'll cross my fingers for a fix, at some time.

I also updated yesterday, on my ODROID H3+. Everything worked as expected.

I noticed that /etc/xensource/usb-policy.conf was send back to stock configuration, so I readded my modification to it. I'm not sure, if that's the expected behavior, after the host update + restart.

Thank you for the latest update .

Andrew

@stormi I have updated 8.3 machines, but they are only test machines. I also did a fresh 8.3 install and update. Working as usual.

gskger

@stormi No problem with a rolling pool update of my two playlab host. Pool reports up-to-date and healthy (XO from source). Basic VM and VDI tasks work as expected. Looking good

ravenet

@stormi No issues so far on Ryzen 1700x, Xeon e5-2640v3, and 2 Epyc 7313P systems

Anonabhar

Updated my HP DL360 G7 home lab with no problem at all.. Everything seems to work OK.. 8-)

stormi

@exetico said in XCP-ng 8.3 public alpha :

@stormi Thanks. I'll cross my fingers for a fix, at some time.

I noticed that /etc/xensource/usb-policy.conf was send back to stock configuration, so I readded my modification to it. I'm not sure, if that's the expected behavior, after the host update + restart.

Yes, it is. I opened this upstream issue about it, but no common decision was reached yet: https://github.com/xapi-project/xen-api/issues/4935

stormi created this issue in xapi-project/xen-api